Visual Acuity and the Physiognomer's Art of Observation

Abstract

A printed portrait sounds like an oxymoron: black and white and bereft of the illusionism that painted portraits used to trick the eye, did printed portraits actually have any stakes in the game of establishing identity, or were they hamstrung by their medium? Although there certainly were prints that doggedly aimed to identify the sitter, many early modern printed portraits did not make rigorous claims to positive identification but floated in the space between prototype and identity. From the confluence of new materials and new audiences brought about by print emerged new faces and new uses for them: character heads in genres such as physiognomies and cosmographies began to reflect the results of observation. Mid-sixteenth-century physiognomies, books that coached viewers how to read the profiles of their friends and neighbours, aspired to present empirical knowledge to their readers. Despite the tightrope they tread between mimesis and idealisation and their heavy reliance on convention, early modern prints were confident about their ability to cue observations and calibrate sightings, and their organisational aptitude should not be overlooked. Game changers in shaping disciplinary activity related to empirical experience, generic portraits, as this essay will argue, developed skills like visual acuity.