At first glance, you’d think that this picture by Octavio Ocampo is just a simple portrait of the side of an old man’s face. But when you look closer at The General’s Family, you can see that there are lots of little human faces. In total, the painting has nine of them.
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The majority of people who look at this piece can only spot four faces. The reason is actually very simple and relatively logical. The brain mainly focuses on the centre of the painting which is only made up of four faces. The General’s large head from the side, then another old man, and finally a young woman holding a baby in her arms.
But when you look around the General’s head, you can see that there are five more faces in the surroundings. The painter wanted to have fun by creating optical illusions with this piece of art and that is why it is called ‘The General’s Family’. At first, you only see one man when in fact, you can find more if you just pay a bit of attention.
Check out the video above to see how many you can spot!