Abstract

The importance of physiognomics for portrait painting is well known. It is less known, how- ever, that this mode of inquiry informed the methodology of art history and other visual sci- ences. The methodology of art history, in turn, affected physiognomics, as can be seen in the studies of Lavater and later developments such as characterology and racial science. The in- terdependence of physiognomics and art history becomes most obvious in the concept of style as it was developed in the late 18th century by Winckelmann. Lavater and later physiognomists drew on his idea that style expresses the spirit of a people, an idea that had itself drawn upon physiognomic concepts. The interference of the two disciplines shaped art history in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 1920s, 30s and 40s, things developed basically in two directions: physiognomics was reevaluated as a form of visual hermeneutics superior to language, and racial physiognomics was integrated into art history. In this period, art historians such as Wilhelm Pinder, Wilhelm Fraenger and Hans Sedlmayr explicitly developed physiognomic methodologies. After World War II the ties between art history and physiognomics loosened. In our time they seem to be tightening again as physiognomics reveals itself to be a problematic forerunner of visual studies.