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Richard Dadd (1817–1886) was a well-known Victorian artist who murdered his father, compelled by the delusion that a demonic force possessed his father’s body. He was one of the first to bypass execution by reason of insanity and spent the remainder of his life in the Bethlem and Broadmoor asylums. Dadd is rare both as a patient and an artist because he left behind nearly a 40-year record of artwork and journals, which constitute a unique medical and psychiatric resource at a time when the ideas on the relationship of facial expression and madness were changing. Sir Charles Bell’s (1774–1842) widely accepted views that the “face of madness” is bestial and anatomically distinctive were being challenged by such physicians as Sir Alexander Morison (1779–1866), who was also Dadd’s own “alienist” (i.e., psychiatrist). The purpose of this article is to explore the nature and extent of the influence of Bell and Morison on Dadd, which has not been brought out in the existing studies. By a comparative analysis, it will be shown that Dadd may have conveyed a different view in his works that foreshadows subsequent developments that are closer to a modern understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on Ottoman imperial portrait books and the influence of Western artists and oil paintings from Venice, Italy. The article discusses the role of the Venetian painter Gentile Bellini at the Ottoman court, the portrait collection of Venetian physician Paolo Giovio and the significance of costumes to classify people in Ottoman portraiture. The article also discusses portraits of sultans including Mehmed II, Suleyman I and Murad III as well as the role of physiognomy in portraiture and the Ottoman portrait book the "Şemā'ilnāme" and book "Elogia" by Giovio.

Venetian patrician portraits of the late fifteenth century document deeply ingrained expectations of that class. Largely static and impassive, the subjects of independent portraits appear as slight variations on a theme, rather than as studies of individuals. In contrast, Titian's (Tiziano Vecellio, ca. 1488–1576) early portraits seem to represent a significant departure from tradition and reveal the artist's commitment to portraying personality, as well as physiognomy. In this article, I suggest that Titian's success was due in part to his knowledge of and sensitivity to the social constraints of late fifteenth-century Venetian culture. In turn, this allowed him to consciously accommodate traditional expectations of his patrician clientele while incrementally introducing the modern portrait. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Around 1670 the French court painter and Academician Charles Le Brun produced a series of drawings featuring naturalistic animal heads, as well as imaginary heads in which he refashioned various nonhuman animal species to make humanoid physiognomies. What were the purpose and significance of these unusual works? I argue that they show Le Brun’s interest in what we today would call animal psychology: focusing upon the sensory organs and their connections with the animal’s brain, Le Brun studied his animals as conscious protagonists of the natural realm. One source that may have served him in this project was Marin Cureau de La Chambre’s De la Connoissance des bestes of 1645, in which the physician argued that animals possess a conscious soul grounded in the senses. However, Le Brun’s animal-humans have no clear place in the artist’s taxonomy* nor, indeed, in any seventeenth century understandings of species. It is rather John Locke, at his most skeptical, who offers the best parallel in the realm of natural philosophy to Le Brun’s unsettling animal humans. Probably without meaning to, Le Brun demonstrated through his eerie, boundary-crossing creatures the limits of visual classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the fundamental connection between the ways of talking about a physiognomy and those of discussing surface in an artistic object. Concept of realism in art; Context of neoclassical aesthetics and enlightenment biology; Issue of representation in art.

Examines painter Charles Demuth's emblematic portrait of William Carlos Williams. Symbolism; Artistic style; Role of physiognomy in the art work.

Examines the influence of phrenology on the art of Hiram Powers. Background on the theory of phrenology; Criticisms toward the concept of phrenology in art; Works of Powers; Theory of physiognomy in art.

The article focuses on the role of mimesis in the historiography of art history. The article discusses the prevalence of anthropomorphism in architecture in the 19th-century, other concepts in art history at this time such as hermeneutics and physiognomy and texts by scholars such as Johann Caspar Lavater, Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Charles Blanc. The article goes on to discuss the establishment of the concept of character by Lavater, the concept of style in art history and the continued underlying role of the concept mimesis.