Abstract
The chapter analyses the ‘facial-expression’–code in recent emotion-research (neuro-psychology) as a modern equivalent to the vera icon-problem in the image of Christ's face, namely the image of the face representing inaccessible traces of something entirely heterogeneous: emotions on the one hand and Christ's lacking body on the other. Departing from recent empirical emotion research, the data-iconography of digital imaging, and the underlying ‘Facial Action Coding System’ (FACS), the chapter presents an archaeology of the components of the system: a limited number of facial movements-patterns represented on the frontal face as code or indicator of certain emotions. Whereas the equation of certain facial patterns with one of the emotions from the catalogue of emotions is traced back via Duchenne de Bologne's physiognomic orthography up to Le Brun, the schema of the frontal face refers to the enface-format or frontal icon in the history of the likeness. The chapter closes with examples from art and photography to demonstrate the large distance between the facial expression code and the multiplicity and partial unreadability of expressive faces in humans.
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