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This project explores the work of Hans Holbein the Younger, sixteenth-century printmaker and portraitist, through the lens of early modern physiognomic thought. This period's renewed interest in the discipline of physiognomy, the art and science of "reading" human features, reflects a desire to understand the relationship between outer appearances and inner substances of things. Physiognomic theory has a host of applications and meanings for the visual artist, who produces a surface representation or likeness, yet scholarship on this subject has been limited. Examining Holbein's social context and artistic practice, this project constructs the possibility of a physiognomic reading of several major works. Holbein's engagement with physiognomic theories of appearance and representation provides a vital point of access to early modern discourse on character, identity and self. / Art History

This thesis analyzes the philosophical origins of dualism in Western culture in the Classical period in order to examine dualist modes of representation in the history of Western portraiture. Dualism - or the separation of soul and body - takes the form in portraiture of the representation of the head or head and shoulders at the expense of the body, and since its emergence in Classical Greece, has been the major influence on portraiture. In this respect the modern portrait's commonplace attention to the face rests on the dualist notion that the soul, and therefore the individuality of the subject, rests in the head. Art historical literature on portraiture, however, fails to address the pictorial, cultural and theoretical complications arising from various forms of dualism and their different artistic methodologies, such as that of the physiognomy (the definition of personality through facial characteristics) in the 19th century. That is, there is a failure to identify the complexities of dualism's relationship to the traditional honorific aspects of the portrait (the fact that historians are inclined to accept at face value the fact that portraits historically have tended to honour the achievements and social status of the sitter). Indeed, scholars have a propensity to romanticise the humanist individualists inherent to this long history of the honorific, particularly in canonic portrait practices such as Rembrandt's and Picasso's.

This thesis addresses how female beauty was understood in the eighteenth century and aims to build on and expand the existing scholarship from Robert Jones, Tita Chico, Tassie Gwilliam, G. J. Barker-Benfield and Naomi Baker, amongst others. Each of these scholars has discussed various areas of beauty, including taste, cosmetics, sensibility, gender and, for Baker, the opposite to beauty, ugliness. Building on these areas of study, this thesis will address the concept of beauty in both its physical and moral sense. That is, the connection of the beautiful body with the ideas or associations it has come to signify. For example, the beautiful female body usually informs readings of virtue, morality, goodness, but, in some cases, beauty can be read as wantonness, immorality and foolishness. In order to navigate these contradictory associations, the thesis has been split into category chapters and divided into two parts. The first part will examine beauty's physiognomic origins, its role in aesthetic philosophy, and its artistic expression. In the second part, with a more literary focus, the concept of beauty will be discussed in connection to its moral associations, the effects of cosmetics and health, and how concerns for reading the body are considered in the mid-century's moral novels. The evidence for the thesis will include various types of literature, including scientific and artistic treatises, fairytales, letters, advertisements, recipe books, cosmetic manuals, poetry and prose fiction. Although the scope of this thesis is wide reaching, the relationship between the body and mind, that is, the legibility of the inner qualities on the external signs of the body, remains very much at its centre. These numerous and varying examples have been chosen to demonstrate how influential this connection really was in the period, and how it informs the understanding of female beauty in the eighteenth-century.

Leonardo da Vinci's art and science have a dynamic relationship that can be used to better understand the role of the individual and the human body within his art. Leonardo believed that movements of the body were expressions of the soul. He also thought that the body was as a microcosm of the physical world. The theories, based in ancient tradition, would be challenged by his work with the human anatomy. By studying his notebooks it becomes evident that Leonardo held nature to be the highest creator of the world but as he worked to understand the human body and through extension the physical world, his ideas about nature and the divine became more incomprehensible. Leonardo's art reflects this turn of perspective as he becomes unable to define the physical world through the human body.

A presente tese tem, basicamente, dois objetivos principais: traduzir um tratado fisiognomônico, o De Physiognomonia Liber, de autoria desconhecida, provavelmente do século IV d.C., e ainda estudar a fisiognomonia na Antiguidade Clássica, cotejando os preceitos expostos de diferentes manuais. Há pouca informação a respeito da fisiognomonia nos textos da Antiguidade, contudo, a análise fisiognomônica era adotada como mecanismo para representar ethos ou pathos. Geralmente considerada uma techne, seu estatuto tem sido questionado porque também era um método de divinação. Inúmeros teóricos, dentre os quais estão Platão e Aristóteles, discutiam diversos aspectos concernentes à teoria fisiognomônica, tais como a influência dos humores no caráter de um indivíduo e as analogias entre os homens e os animais. A fisiognomonia relaciona-se à medicina se considerarmos a teoria dos humores e, além disso, há o método etnológico em que se atribui características específicas ao ethos de acordo com a influência do ambiente sobre os indivíduos, proposição presente no corpus hipocrático. Procuramos também observar a presença de elementos fisiognomônicos na actio retórica e na literatura da Antiguidade. É possível inferir que o emprego de conceitos fisiognomônicos compõe o que alguns teóricos chamam consciência fisiognomônica, existente já na poesia de Homero. / The present thesis has basically two main objectives: to translate a physiognomical treatise, named De Physiognomonia Liber, by an unknown writer, probably from the 4th century; and also to study physiognomy, comparing concepts from different manuals. There is very little information about physiognomy in ancient texts. Nevertheless, physiognomical analysis was used in classical poetry and prose as a mechanism to represent pathos or ethos. Usually considered as techne, its status has been questioned because physiognomy was also a method of divination. Many theoreticians, including Plato and Aristotle, discuss several aspects which concern physiognomical theory, such as the influence of humours on a person\'s character, as well as the analogies between humans and animals. Physiognomy is related to medicine if we consider the theory of the humours, and also one of the physiognomical methods, the ethnological, which attributes specific features to ethos according to the influence of the environment where one lives, this is a statement already present in Hippocratic corpus. Besides, we try to observe the presence of physiognomical elements in both rhetorical actio and classical literature. Thus, the employment of physiognomical concepts is what some researchers call \"physiognomical consciousness\", which exists since Homer.

A presente tese tem, basicamente, dois objetivos principais: traduzir um tratado fisiognomônico, o De Physiognomonia Liber, de autoria desconhecida, provavelmente do século IV d.C., e ainda estudar a fisiognomonia na Antiguidade Clássica, cotejando os preceitos expostos de diferentes manuais. Há pouca informação a respeito da fisiognomonia nos textos da Antiguidade, contudo, a análise fisiognomônica era adotada como mecanismo para representar ethos ou pathos. Geralmente considerada uma techne, seu estatuto tem sido questionado porque também era um método de divinação. Inúmeros teóricos, dentre os quais estão Platão e Aristóteles, discutiam diversos aspectos concernentes à teoria fisiognomônica, tais como a influência dos humores no caráter de um indivíduo e as analogias entre os homens e os animais. A fisiognomonia relaciona-se à medicina se considerarmos a teoria dos humores e, além disso, há o método etnológico em que se atribui características específicas ao ethos de acordo com a influência do ambiente sobre os indivíduos, proposição presente no corpus hipocrático. Procuramos também observar a presença de elementos fisiognomônicos na actio retórica e na literatura da Antiguidade. É possível inferir que o emprego de conceitos fisiognomônicos compõe o que alguns teóricos chamam consciência fisiognomônica, existente já na poesia de Homero. / The present thesis has basically two main objectives: to translate a physiognomical treatise, named De Physiognomonia Liber, by an unknown writer, probably from the 4th century; and also to study physiognomy, comparing concepts from different manuals. There is very little information about physiognomy in ancient texts. Nevertheless, physiognomical analysis was used in classical poetry and prose as a mechanism to represent pathos or ethos. Usually considered as techne, its status has been questioned because physiognomy was also a method of divination. Many theoreticians, including Plato and Aristotle, discuss several aspects which concern physiognomical theory, such as the influence of humours on a person\'s character, as well as the analogies between humans and animals. Physiognomy is related to medicine if we consider the theory of the humours, and also one of the physiognomical methods, the ethnological, which attributes specific features to ethos according to the influence of the environment where one lives, this is a statement already present in Hippocratic corpus. Besides, we try to observe the presence of physiognomical elements in both rhetorical actio and classical literature. Thus, the employment of physiognomical concepts is what some researchers call \"physiognomical consciousness\", which exists since Homer.

A Fisiognomonia é uma arte (em árabe se diz cilm, também traduzível por saber ou, mais modernamente, ciência) que atraiu a atenção de inúmeros filósofos e letrados de diversas culturas ao longo da história humana: desde os egípcios antigos, os gregos, os romanos, os hindus até os árabes, todos esses povos que aperfeiçoaram o seu conhecimento e prática desta arte, exercida de diversas maneiras por eles, cada qual colaborando para aprimorá-la. Esta tese tem o propósito de ilustrar a colaboração árabe nesta ciência, apresentando uma primeira tradução comentada da mais importante obra árabe clássica que tratou este assunto. Como a simples tradução dessa obra já oferece, por si mesma, uma visão quase que satisfatória e integral a respeito da fisiognomonia entre os letrados árabes, o estudo anexado à presente tradução visa apresentar o desenvolvimento desta arte, expondo algumas semelhanças existentes entre os antigos filósofos árabes que abordaram o tema, e seus semelhantes em outras culturas, principalmente a grega. Para que tal tarefa se tornasse possível, foi preciso recorrer a algumas conclusões e afirmações feitas por estudiosos árabes modernos. / Physiognomy is an art that has attracted the attention of a number of philosophers and intellectuals different cultures, throughout human history: from the Ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Indians to the Arabs. Physiognomy has reached its climax with the Arabs, who have made an influential contribution to lift it out of its primitive stages. This thesis, which consists in the translation of an ancient book on the subject, is intended to show how the Arabs have contributed to this science. The book translated gives a satisfactory view of Physiognomy among the intellectual Arab. The study annexed to this translation intends to show how this art has evolved. Also, it intends to show the similarity, as far as dealing with Physiognomy is concerned, between ancient Arab philosophers and their counterparts in other cultures and mainly the Greek one. To make this task possible, one has to resort to some conclusions and affirmations by modern Arab scholars.

Physiognomy is generally assumed to be, and has been historicized as, the science of judging human character according to the features of the face. However, the type of physiognomy favoured by seventeenth-century English authors was one which adapted the Aristotelian claim that physiognomy be a full-body study. This project explores how physiognomic focus on the entire body – from the forehead, fingers and feet to the breast, belly and back – was shaped by contemporary religious and “scientific” legitimating claims, and how it interacted with the century’s anxieties regarding disorder and the self. The implicit suggestion that few bodies and the souls which helped shape them were perfectly symmetrical and, by extension, virtuous, illustrated human variety and depravity and stressed the need for self subordination. Only through reason and God’s grace, it was argued, could humans moderate the interconnected and essentializing influences of sin, the stars and the humours, and thereby embody the godly values of truth, virtue and harmony. The full-bodied practice of seventeenth-century physiognomy simultaneously emphasized human uniqueness and God’s omnipotence, and was both a part and product of predominant tensions and mentalities.

Notre enquête entend présenter les enjeux philosophiques soulevés par la physiognomonie, cet art, cette technique, cette pseudoscience qui entend connaître et prétend juger un individu en se fondant sur l’étude de sa complexion physique. Le corpus des textes afférents, hétérogène et protéiforme, s’appuie sur des pans entiers de pratiques et de savoirs anciens quasiment tombés dans l’oubli et qui continuent à nourrir néanmoins l’histoire des représentations. Notre corpus s’étend depuis les origines mésopotamiennes de la physiognomonie jusqu’à l’Age classique. La méthode adoptée est historique et conceptuelle. Elle a permis d’établir que l’histoire de la physiognomonie s’organise autour de deux grands paradigmes : paradigme de l’analogie et paradigme de l’expression, dont il s’agit de montrer l’articulation chronologique et logique. Les schèmes de pensée à l’œuvre étayent une sémiologie et une herméneutique dans différentes directions : médicales, mantiques, esthétiques. L’analyse raisonnée du maillage des classifications et des correspondances que la physiognomonie implique, permet de dessiner les frontières topologiques et symboliques de l’humain, aux confins de la rationalité et de l’imagination. / The purpose of our research is to explore the philosophical issues raised by physiognomy – an art, a technique, a pseudoscience according to which an individual’s inner nature can be revealed and judged on the analysis of his physical features. Our heterogeneous and protean body of references relies on whole panels of practices and ancient skills that have somehow sunk into oblivion but still keep feeding the history of representations. Our body of research is spanning a wide period, ranging from the Mesopotamian origins of physiognomy to the Classical Age. Our method of investigation focuses on the history of ideas and concept analysis. It has allowed us to assert that the history of physiognomy is built on two paradigms: the paradigm of analogy and the paradigm of expression whose chronological and logical articulations are to be defined. The thought processes involved support semiological and hermeneutical approaches that take different directions: medical, ominous and aesthetics ones. An accurate reasoned analysis of the texture of classifications and correspondences woven by physiognomy enables us to draw the topological and symbolical frontiers of the Human, on the fringes of rationality and imagination.