FAC E


Eagle-eyed


Just as Aristotle (384–322 BCE) did, many people can’t resist linking individuals’ characters with the animals their faces most resemble. Possessing an eagle’s piercing gaze could represent a regal char- acter, but it might also be seen as a sign of a cruel and predatory personality. Other birds have their own character traits: in De Humana Physiognomia (1586), Giambattista della Porta attributes a nose shaped like the beak of a raven or cock to a shameless and lecherous character. Charles Le Brun (1619–90) systematised


these instinctive hypotheses, dividing the faces of animals and humans into comparative segments. He concluded that a hooked nose, curved lips and large eyes indicated a grasping nature.


Every person with eyes in his own head has noticed the


general resemblance which some of his fellow human beings bear to various animals – the lion, the ox, the goat, the horse, the fox, the cat, the monkey, the ass;


and as for particular features and traits, such as the hawk or eagle nose...one cannot walk abroad without meeting with staring examples of them.


The London Literary Gazette and


Journal of the Belles Lettres, Artes, Sciences Etc., No. 546, 1827


Vegetable likenesses


Many facial characteristics have been likened to vegetables, from ‘cherry lips’ to ‘potato noses’ and ‘cauliflower ears’. The sixteenth-century Italian painter Arcimboldo caricatured people as collages of vegetables, a method famously used by the Sun newspaper in 1992, when it gave ill-starred England football manager Graham Taylor a turnip for a head.


Relationship between the human face and that of the eagle Lithograph from Dissertation sur un Traité de Charles Le Brun, 17th century After Charles Le Brun b12949048 Wellcome Library


The ‘Visitorians’


In her 2012 book You Animal, You! artist and writer Charlotte Cory superimposed images of taxidermy animal heads on human photographic portraits from Victorian visiting cards. At first, Cory says, viewers find the subversive hybrid creatures she calls ‘Visitorians’ funny. The initial laughter then transforms into serious contemplation of these sometimes disturbing scenes.


A carrot for a nose Coloured lithograph W Spooner, 19th century 11855i Wellcome Library


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