From Face to Vision: Good Likeness

Abstract

One of the most important art-theoretical texts of the eighteenth century is Joshua Reynolds&s;s Discourses on Art , written to build the reputation and authority of the Royal Academy as an institution. The trend in the eighteenth century was, according to Nadia Tscherny, that &s;expression&s; came gradually preferred to &s;depiction&s; in portraiture and the debate about good likeness was steered from within the newly founded Royal Academy, with its president exploring the changing nature of good likeness. Both Reynolds and Johann Caspar Lavater believe that good likeness evokes a positive and physical response in the observer, but while Reynolds wants to teach his students to look beyond the minute and the particular, Lavater privileges detail. In addition, while it is important to examine faces, character can only be determined by means of a physiognomical drawing, but these drawings often fail to embody what Lavater believes he sees in a face.