REALISM OF FACE DEPICTION IN PORTRAITURE

Abstract

This study presents the analysis of realism of portraiture in the context of physical anthropology. Standard descriptive traits such as the development of the upper eyelid fold, nasal profi le, etc., were scored on 120 portraits. To examine the accuracy of artistic rendition, these traits were assessed on 30 pairs of portraits of the same persons painted by different artists, and on 30 pairs of portraits versus photographs of the same persons. For each trait, the mean difference of scores was calculated. The mean differences are within the scoring error, indicating the artists’ high accuracy in rendering facial features. Next, four composite portraits were generated, two relating to 15th–16th century French aristocrats, and two to the 15th–17th century Dutch population, mainly that of Amsterdam. Composite portraits for every geographic region are virtually identical, suggesting that they represent a specifi c population rather than just a total of\individual data. Also, even though painters might be somewhat imprecise in depicting individual faces, these inaccuracies are leveled off in composite representations. In sum, portraiture is a very informative source of anthropometric information.