The History of Physiognomy

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Queen Mary University of London (London), Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris), and Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa)

 
 

 

 

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AERNI, Fritz, Adolf Hitler und die Physiognomik (Waldshut-Tiengen, 2001).
AGRIMI, Jole, Ingeniosa scientia nature. Studi sulla fisiognomica medievale (Tavarnuzze, Firenze, 2002). See review.
ALBONICO, Rolf, Mensch, Menschen, Typen. Entwicklung und Stand der Typenforschung (Basel, 1970).
ALLENTUCK, Marcia, 'Fuseli and Lavater: Physiognomical theory and the Enlightenment', SVEC, 55 (1967), pp. 89-112.
AMBERGER-LAHRMANN, Mechthild, Anatomie und Physiognomie in der hellenistischen Plastik. Dargestellt am Pergamonaltar (Stuttgart, 1996). See review 1 and review 2.
ANDRES, Katharina, Antike Physiognomie in Renaissanceporträts (Frankfurt am Main, 1999).

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BALDENSBERGER, F., ‘Les Théories de Lavater dans la littérature française’, Études d’histoire littéraire, 2nd series (1910).
BARASCH, Moshe, ‘Character and Physiognomy: Bocchi on Donatello’s St George’, JHI, 36:3 (1975), pp. 413-30.
BARIDON, Laurent, Corps et arts. Physionomies et physiologies dans les arts visuels (Paris, 1999).
BARTON, Tamsyn, Power and Knowledge. Astrology, physiognomics, and medicine under the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1994). See review 1 and review 2.
BATES, Brian, The Human Face (London, 2001). See review.
BENEDIKT, B.M., ‘Reading Faces: Physiognomy and epistemology in late eighteenth-century France’, Studies in Philology (1995).
BENTLEY, G.E., ‘The Physiognomy of Lavater's Essays: False imprints, "1789" and "1792", Blake (1995).
BERLAND, K.J.H., ‘Reading Character in the Face: Lavater, Socrates, and physiognomy’, Word & Image (1993).
BIRDWHISTELL, Ray R., Kinesis and Context. Essayss on Body Motion and Communication (Philadelphia, 1970).
BOLZONI, Lina, La stanza della memoria. Modelli letterari e iconografici nell'età della stampa (Torino, 1995). See review.
BORDERIE, Régine, Balzac, peintre de corps: La comédie humaine, ou, le sens des détails ([Paris], 2002).
BORRIS, Kenneth (ed.), Same-sex Desire in the English Renaissance. A sourcebook of texts, 1470-1650 (London, 2004).
BORRMANN, Norbert, Kunst und Physiognomik: Menschendeutung und Menschendarstellung im Abendland (Köln, 1994).
BREITENFELLNER, Kirstin, Lavaters Schatten. Physiognomie und Charakter bei Ganghofer, Fontane und Döblin: Mit einem Exkurs über den Verbrecher als literarische Gestalt von Schiller bis Böll und einer systematischen Bibliographie zum Thema "Physiognomie und Charakter"  (Dresden, 1999).
BRITTON, Piers D.G., ‘The Signs of Faces: Leonardo on physiognomic science and the "four universal states of man"’, Renaissance Studies, 16:2 (2002), pp. 143-62.
BROOKS, G.P., ‘Johann Casper Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy’, Psychological Reports  (1980).

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CAMPE, Rüdiger and SCHNEIDER, Manfred, Geschichten der Physiognomik. Text, Bild, Wissen (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1996).
CARO BAROJA, Julio, La cara, espejo del alma: historia de la fisiognómica (Barcelona, 1987).
CAROLI, Flavio, Leonardo.  Studi di fisiognomica (Milano, 1991).
COLBERT, Charles, A Measure of Perfection: Phrenology and the Fine Arts in America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998). See review.
COOTER, Roger, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science. Phrenology and the organisation of consent in 19th-century Britain (Cambridge, 1984) .
COURTINE, Jean-Jacques, ‘Corps, regard, discours: typologies et classifications dans les physiognomies de l’âge classique’, Langue française (1987).
COURTINE, Jean-Jacques and VIGARELLO G., ‘La Physiognomie de l’homme impudique: bienséances et impudeurs dans les physiognomonies au XVIe et XVIIe siècle’, Communications (1987).
COURTINE, Jean-Jacques, HAROCHE, Claudine, Histoire du visage. Exprimer et taire ses émotions (du XVIe siècle au début du XIXe siècle) (Paris, 1994).
COURTINE, Jean-Jacques, ‘Le miroir de l’âme’, in Alain Corbin et al. (eds), Histoire du corps, Vol. I, De la Renaissance aux Lumières (Paris, 2005).
COVIN, Michel, Les mille visages de Napoléon (Paris, 1999).
COWLING, M. C., The Artist as Anthropologist. The representation of type and character in Victorian art (Cambridge, 1989).
CRAWFORD, J.S., ‘Physiognomy in Classical and American Portrait Busts’, American Art Journal, Vol. 9:1 (1977), pp. 49-60.
CURTIS, L. P., Apes and Angels. The Irishman in Victorian caricature [rev. ed.] (London, 1997).

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DALTON, Susan, 'Searching for Virtue: Physiognomy, Sociability and Taste in Isabelle Teotochi Albrizzi's Ritratti', Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40:1 (2006), pp. 85-108.
DANDREY, P., ‘La Physiognomie comparée à l’âge classique’, Revue de synthèse(1983).
DANDREY, P., ‘Un Tardif blason du corps animal: résurgences de la physiognomie comparée au XVIIe siècle’, XVIIe siècle (1986).
DANOW, D.K., ‘Physiognomy: the codeless “science”’, Semiotica (1984).
DARMON, Albert, Les Corps immatériels. Esprits et images dans l’oeuvre de Martin Cureau de La Chambre, 1594-1669 (Paris, 1985).
DUMONT, M., ‘Le Succès mondain d’une fausse science: la physiognomonie de Lavater’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (1984).

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EKMAN, Paul, FRIESEN, Wallace V. and ELLSWORTH, Phoebe, Emotions in the human face (New York, 1972).
ERLE, Sibylle, 'Leaving Their Mark: Lavater, Fuseli and Blake's Imprint on Aphorisms on Man', Comparative Critical Studies, 3:3 (2006), pp. 347-369.
EVANS, Elisabeth C., Physiognomics in the Ancient World (Philadelphia, 1969).
EVANS, Elisabeth C., ‘Physiognomics in the Ancient World’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (1969).

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The Faces of Physiognomy. Interdisciplinary approaches to Johann Caspar Lavater, Conference, revised, expanded papers (Columbia, SC, 1993).
FAST, Julius, Body Language (New York, 1970).
FIGLIO, K., ‘Theories of Perception and the Physiology of Mind in the Late Eighteenth Century’, History of Science (1975).
FRANZBACH, Martin, Lessings Huarte-Ubersetzung (1752). Die Rezeption und Wirkungsgeschichte des "Examen de Ingenios para las Ciencias" (1575) in Deutschland (Hamburg, 1965). See review in Hispanic Review, 36:2 (1968), pp. 162-64.

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GETREVI, Paolo, Le Scritture de volto: Fisiognomica e modelli culturali dal Medioevo ad oggi (Milano, 1991).
GILMAN, Sander L., ‘Lavater, Lichtenberg and the Physiognomy of the Black’, in idem, Blackness without Blacks: Essays on the Image of the Black in Germany) (Boston, Mass., 1982).
GOLDENBERG, David M., The Curse of Ham. Race and slavery in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, N.J., 2003).
GOMBRICH, E.H., ‘On Physiognomic Perception’, in idem, Meditations on a Hobby-Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art (London, 1963).
GOMBRICH, E. H., ‘The Mask and the Face: The perception of physiognomic likeness in life and art’, in idem, The Image and the Eye. Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Oxford, 1972).
GRAHAM, John, ‘Lavater’s Physiognomy: A Checklist’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America  (1961).
GRAHAM, John, ‘Lavater’s Physiognomy in England’, JHI, 22:4 (1961), pp. 561-72.
GRAHAM, John, Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy.  A study in the history of ideas (Berne, 1979).
GRAHAM, John, Stendahl and Physiognomy. Science into art (Charlottesville, Va., 1990).
GRAY, Richard T., About Face. German physiognomic thought from Lavater to Auschwitz (Detroit, [Mich.], 2004). Review.
GUEDRON, Martial and BARIDON, Laurent, Corps et arts: Physionomies et physiologies dans les arts visuels (Paris, 1999).
GUEDRON, Martial, Peaux d’âmes: Interprétations physiognomiques des oeuvres d’art (Paris, 2001).
GUEDRON, Martial and BARIDON, Laurent, L'art et l'histoire de la caricature (Paris, 2006).

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HAHN, Thomas G., 'The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race before the Modern World', Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 31:1(2001), pp. 1-37.
HAMILTON, Peter, The beautiful and the damned (London, 2001).
HANAFI, Zakiya, The Monster in the Machine. Magic, medicine, and the marvelous in the time of the Scientific Revolution (Durham, North Carolina, 2000). See review.
HARKINS, P.W., ‘Cureau de La Chambre and Hippocrates’ Aphorisms’, in H. Reise (ed.), Historical Explorations in Medicine and Psychiatry (1978).
HARRIS, Michael D., Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Review.
HARRISON, Peter, 'The Virtues of Animals in Seventeenth-Century Thought', Journal of the History of Ideas, 59:3 (1998), pp. 463-84.
HARTLEY, Lucy, The Grammar of Expression? Physiognomy and the language of the emotions in nineteenth-century England (University of York, 1995).
HARTLEY, Lucy, Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture (Cambridge, 2001). See review 1 and review 2.
HASBACH, A.C., ‘About Face: A History of the Science of Physiognomy’s Influence on the Art of Portraiture in Britain, 1740-1820’ (PhD, University of Warwick, 1997).
HOBSON, M., ‘La Physiognomie: le portrait d’un exemple’, in Renzo Zorzi (ed.), Le Metamorfosi del ritratto (Firenze, 2002).
HOUSTON, Robert Allan, 'The Face of Madness in Eighteenth-and Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland', Eighteenth-Century Life, 27:2 (2003), pp. 49-66.

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ICHHEISER, Gustav, Apperances and Realities. Misunderstandigs in Human Relations (San Francisco, 1970).
Il volto e gli affetti. Fisiognomica ed espressione nelle arti del Rinascimento: atti del convegno di studi, Torino, 28-29 novembre 2001
(Firenze, 2003).
Im Lichte Lavaters. Lektüren zum 200. Todestag (Zürich, 2003).

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JACQUART, Danielle, ‘La Physiognomie à l’époque de Frédéric II: le traité de Michel Scot’, Micrologus (1994).
JÖHNK, Carsten, Die Bedeutung der Physiognomik für die englische Karikatur um 1800. Studien zur lesbaren Physiognomie bei James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson und George Cruikshank (Göttingen, 1998).
JORDANOVA, Ludmilla, ‘The Arts and Science of Seeing in Medicine: Physiognomy 1780-1820’, in William F. Bynum & Roy Porter (eds), Medicine and the Five Senses (Cambridge, 1993).
JUENGELl, Scott, 'Countenancing History: Mary Wollstonecraft, Samuel Stanhope Smith, and Enlightenment Racial Science', English Literary History, 68:4 (2001), pp. 897-927.

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KAIN, Philip J., Hegel and the Other. A study of the phenomenology of spirit (Albany, N.Y., 2005).
KÄUSER, Andreas, Physiognomik und Roman im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main, 1989).
KLOMSER, Gertraud, Umrisse einer Geschichte der Physiognomik als Grundlage der Graphologie von Michon (PhD thesis Universität München 1971).
KRITZMAN, Lawrence D., 'The Socratic Makeover: Montaigne's "De la physionomie" and the Ethics of the Impossible', L'Esprit Créateur, 46:1 (2006), pp. 75-85.
KWAKKELSTEIN, Michael W., ‘Leonardo da Vinci’s Grotesque Heads and the Breaking of the Physiognomic Mould’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Libraries, 54 (1991), pp. 127-36.
KWAKKELSTEIN, Michael W., Leonardo da Vinci as a Physiognomist. Theory and drawing practice (Leiden, 1994).

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LEANEY, Enda, 'Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century Ireland', New Hibernia Review, 10: 3 (2006), pp. 24-42.
LEEK Sybil, Phrenology (London, 1970).
LÖFFLER, Petra and SCHOLZ, Leander (eds), Das Gesicht ist eine starke Organisation (Köln, 2004). See table of contents (in German).
LYON, John B., '"The Science of Sciences". Replication and Reproduction in Lavater's Physiognomics', Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40:2 (2007), pp. 257-77.

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MATT, Peter von, Fertig ist das Angesicht. Zur Literaturgeschichte des menschlichen Gesichts (München, 1983).
MCMASTER, Juliet, The Index of the Mind. Physiognomy in the Novel (Lethbridge, Alta., 1990).
MCNEILL, Daniel, The Face. A natural history (London, 1999).
MEIJER, Mirjam Claude, Race and Aesthetics in the Anthropology of Petrus Camper (Amsterdam, 1999). See review.
MELLER, P., ‘Physiognomical Theory in Renaissance Heroic Portraits’, in The Renaissance and Mannerism: Studies in Western Art (Princeton, 1963).
MICHEL, Werner (ed.), Zur Menschenkenntnis. Aus den Sudelbüchern von Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Darmstadt, 1995).
MRAZ, Gerda and Schögl, Uwe (eds.) Das Kunstkabinett des Johann Caspar Lavater (Wien, 1999).
MÜLLER-JAHNKE, W.-D., 'Zum Prioritätenstreit um die Metoposkopie. Hajek contra Cardano', Sudhoffs Archiv für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, LXVI, (1982), pp. 79-84.

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NANCE, Brian, Turquet de Mayerne as Baroque Physician. The art of medical portraiture (Amsterdam, 2001).

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OEHLER-KLEIN, Sigrid, Die Schädellehre Franz Joseph Galls in Literatur und Kritik des 19. Jahrhunderts. Zur Rezeptionsgeschichte einer medizinisch-biologisch begründeten Theorie der Physiognomik und Psychologie (Stuttgart, 1990).

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PERCIVAL, Melissa, The Appearance of Character. Physiognomy and Facial Expression in Eighteenth-Century France (Leeds, 1999). See review.
PERCIVAL, Melissa, ‘J. C. Lavater. Physiognomy and connoisseurship’, British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies (2003).
PERCIVAL, Melissa and TYTLER, Graeme (eds), Physiognomy in Profile. Lavater's impact on European culture (Newark, Del., 2005). See review.
PERSON, Jutta, Der pathographische Blick. Physiognomik, Atavismustheorien und Kulturkritik 1870-1930 (Würzburg, 2005).
PINAULT-SØRENSEN, Madelaine, De la Physionomie humaine et animale: dessins de Charles Le Brun (Paris, 2001).
PIPER, David, The English Face, ed. Malcolm Rogers (London, 1992).
PONTEMOLI, A. (ed.), Il volto e gli afetti: fisiognomica ed espressione nelle arti del Rinascamento (2003).
PORTER, Martin, English 'treatises on physiognomy' c.1500 - c.1780 (Oxford, 1997).
PORTER, Roy, ‘Making Faces. Physiognomy and Fashion in 18th-century England’, Études anglaises (1985).
POSEQ, A., ‘The Physiognomy of Bernini’s Elephant’, Source (2003).
PRICE, F., ‘Imagining Faces. The later 18th-century heroine and the legible universal language of physiognomy’, BJECS (1983).

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REISSER, Ulrich, Physiognomik und Ausdruckstheorie der Renaissance. Der Einfluss charakterologischer Lehren auf Kunst und Kunsttheorie des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (München, 1997).
RIVERS, Christopher, Face Value. Physiognomical thought and the legible body in Marivaux, Lavater, Balzac, Gautier and Zola (Madison, Wisc., 1994).
RODLER, Lucia, Il Silenzi mimici del volto: Studi sulla tradizione fisiognomica italiana tra cinque e seicento(Pisa, 1991).

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SASSI, Maria Michela, The Science of Man in Ancient Greece (Chicago, 2001). See review.
SCHÜLING, Hermann, Bibliographie der psychologischen Literatur des 16. Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim, 1967).
SEITLER, Dana, 'Queer Physiognomies; Or, How Many Ways Can We Do the History of Sexuality?', Criticism, 46:1 (2004), pp. 71-102.
SHERIDAN, G., ‘Les Amusements d’un jésuite: Père Bougeant, Physiognomy and Sensualist Theories’, Australian Journal of French Studies (1993).
SHOOKMAN, Ellis, The Faces of Physiognomy. Interdisciplinary approaches to Johann Caspar Lavater (Columbia, SC, 1993). Review in German Studies Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Feb., 1997), pp. 151-152.
SHORTLAND, Michael Anthony Philip, The Body in Question. Some perceptions, problems and perspectives of the body in relation to character c.1750-1850, 2 Vols (PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 1984).
SHORTLAND, Michael Athnony Philip, ‘The Power of a Thousand Eyes: J.C. Lavater’s Science of Physiognomical Perception’, Criticism (1966).
SHORTLAND, Michael Athnony Philip, ‘Skin Deep. Barthes, Lavater and the Legible Body’, Economy and Society (1985).
SIMONS, Patricia, ‘Women in Frames. The eye, the gaze and the profile in Renaissance portraiture’, History Workshop Journal, 25:1 (1988), pp. 4-30.
SIRAISI, Nancy G., 'The Fielding H. Garrison Lecture. Medicine and the Renaissance World of Learning', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 78:1 (2004), pp. 1-36.
SOMERSET, Fiona, '"Mark Him Wel for He is on of po". Training the "Lewed" Gaze to Discern Hypocrisy', English Literary History, 68:2 (2001), pp. 315-34.
STAFFORD, B.M., ‘''Peculiar marks''. Lavater and the countenance of blemished thought’, Art Journal (1987).
STAFFORD, B.M. et al., ‘One Face of Beauty, one Picture of Health. The hidden aesthetic of medical practice’, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (1989).
STAUM, Martin, ‘Physiognomy and Phrenology in the Paris Athénée’, JHI, 56:3 (1995), pp. 443-62.
STEMMLER J., ‘The Physiognomical Portraits of J.C. Lavater’,  Art Bulletin (1993).
STIMILLI, Davide, The Face of Immortality. Physiognomy and criticism (New York, 2005).
STOICHITA, V.I., ‘Johann Caspar Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy and the Hermeneutics of Shadow’, Res (1997).
STROTHER, Z.S., Inventing Masks: Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Review.
SWAIN, Simon, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul. Polemon’s physiognomy from classical antiquity to medieval Islam (Oxford, 2006).

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THEILE, Gert (ed.), Anthropometrie von Lavater bis Avatar (Munich, 2005). See review in German.
TURNER, J., ‘Fuseli and Lavater. The personification of character’, Athanor (1985).
TYTLER, Graeme, Physiognomy in the European Novel. Faces and fortunes (Princeton, 1982).

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VAN DELFT, L., ‘Physiognomonie et peinture en caractères: G.B. della Porta, Le Brun et La Rochefoucauld’, L’Esprit créateur (1986).
VOGT, Sabine, Aristoteles: Physiognomonica. Aristoteles, Werke in Deutscher Übersetzung, Vol. 18.6 (Berlin, 1999). See review.

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WAGNER, Hans-Josef, Wilhelm von Humboldt – Anthropologie und Theorie der Menschenkennntnis (Darmstadt, 2002).
WECHSLER, Judith, A Human Comedy. Physiognomy and caricature in 19th- century Paris (London, 1982).
WEST, Shearer, ‘Polemic and the Passions. Dr James Parsons’ “Human Physiognomy Explained” and Hogarth’s Aspirations for British History Painting’, British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies (1990).
WEST, Shearer, ‘Wilkes's Squint. Synecdochic physiognomy and political identity in eighteenth-century print culture’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 33:1(1999), pp. 65-84.
WILSON, Philip K., 'Eighteenth-Century "Monsters" and Nineteenth-Century "Freaks". Reading the Maternally Marked Child', Literature and Medicine, 21:1 (2002), pp. 1-25.
WINSTON, Michael, 'Medicine, Marriage, and Human Degeneration in the French Enlightenment', Eighteenth-Century Studies, 38:2 (2005), pp. 263-81.
WRIGHTSMAN, Lawrence S., Assumptions About Human Nature. A social-psychological approach (Monterey, CA, 1974).

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YONKER, D., The Face as an Element of Style. Physiognomical Theory in 18th-Century British Art (1969).

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