History of Eyeglasses
When were eyeglasses invented?
It's hard to say exactly, but the earliest European portrait that includes them is of Hugh of Provence (above), painted by Tommaso da Modena in 1352.
Then as now, eyeglasses were a symbol of intellectual prowess. Even portraits of people who didn't actually wear them sometimes included a pair of glasses to emphasize their scholarly bent, such as this 1480 painting of St. Jerome by Domenico Ghirlandaio.
St. Jerome was best known for translating the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin, which made it accessible to ordinary people of his time. Eyeglasses might have made this arduous task easier, but he couldn't have worn the glasses shown hanging from his desk. He died in 420, hundreds of years before they were invented! Still, so many painters depicted St. Jerome with eyeglasses that he became the patron saint of the guild of spectacle makers.
Source: http://www.allaboutvision.com/
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