Physiognomics and Pathognomics

The sciences of physiognomics and pathognomics aided the eighteenth-century artist in turning the world inside out. They did so by accessing a person's interior (personality, emotions, etc.) through studying his/her exterior features.

Johann Caspar Lavater's study of physiognomics, published in Germany from 1775-1778, aided the portraitist in capturing the enduring concept of a person rather than just a physical likeness. By using conventionalized traits to identify a person's charachter, Lavater advocates an allegorization of the portrait sitter.

Charles Le Brun’s treatise on representing the passions, first published in 1698, continued to exert a massive influence on eighteenth-century painters.  His study of the primary passions included depictions of them, revealing how the painter could clearly portray the interior of a character in a specific moment and situation.  This is evident in a work like George Romney’s The Infant Shakespeare, where Romney has used these stereotyped expressions to represent allegories of each passion.   

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, many artists realized the expressive possibilities of the entire body as well as the face.  Works like P.J. Challiou’s Helen Saved from Aeneas by Venus illustrate that gesture can often carry the emotive weight of the work. 

Studies of physiognomics, pathognomics, and gesture all succeeded in defying the painting’s surface and creating a dynamic world inhabited by realistic people.