"Facial Angle"
Petrus Camper is also known for his theory of the "facial angle" originally in connection with two lectures he gave in Amsterdam in 1770 to art students on beauty and portraiture. He was concerned with the fact that all artists painted the black Magus in the nativity with Caucasian face. He determined that modern humans had facial angles between 70° and 80°, with African and Asian angles closer to 70°, and European angles closer to 80. According to his new portraiture technique, an angle is formed by drawing two lines: one horizontally from the nostril to the ear; and the other perpendicularly from the advancing part of the upper jawbone to the most prominent part of the forehead. He claimed that antique Greco-Roman statues presented an angle of 100°-95°, Europeans of 80°, 'Orientals' of 70°, Black people of 70° and the orangutan of 42-58°, but not in an overtly racist fashion-he merely claimed that, out of all human races, Africans were most removed from the Classical sense of ideal beauty. These results were later used as scientific racism, with research continued by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844) and Paul Broca (1824–1880).
Camper, however, agreed with Buffon in drawing a sharp line between human and animals (although he was misinterpreted by Diderot, who claimed that he was a supporter of the Great Chain of Being theory).
Read more about this topic: Petrus Camper
Famous quotes containing the words facial and/or angle:
“You must call up every strength you own
And you can rip off the whole facial mask.”
—William Dewitt Snodgrass (b. 1926)
“The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under side of heaven’s pavement; it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)