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Facial Angles refers to the content of two lectures on this subject by the Amsterdam professor of anatomy
Vaderlandse Oefeningen, 1770 (Google Books)
report by Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, pp 386-393
Camper's main points in his first lecture were that classical drawing lessons from the time of
File:Petrus Camper facial angles by son Adriaan Gilles - baby to old man.jpg, ...''On the first canvas the head of a child, the head of an adult man, and the head of an old man were shown with their skulls above them, all in profile''...
File:Petrus Camper facial angles by son Adriaan Gilles - orangutan to moor.jpg, ...'' the second canvas had the heads of two apes, an African Moor and a Kalmyk or Asian, again with their skulls drawn above them...''
File:Petrus Camper facial angles by son Adriaan Gilles - europeaan tot antiek.jpg, ..''and again a canvas was brought out with four heads next to each other in profile with varying facial angles; 80 degrees, 90 degrees, and 100 degrees''...
File:Apollo Belvedere 2.jpg, The ''Apollo Pythias'', a plaster cast of which was in the lecture hall.
Camper's work was later quoted again and again, and his engraved drawings were used to prove that he had tried to show a hierarchy of facial angles from the orangutan to the European, but this was never part of either of the two lectures. In fact, he was only trying to help artists make better portraits, and remarked that of all the great masters of art that can be observed in engravings such as Rubens, van Dyk, and Jordaans only the Haarlemmer
text and engravings
in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek) {{DEFAULTSORT:Facial Angles 1791 non-fiction books Art history books Dutch non-fiction books Anthropometry Books of lectures
Petrus Camper
Petrus Camper FRS (11 May 1722 – 7 April 1789), was a Dutch physician, anatomist, physiologist, midwife, zoologist, anthropologist, palaeontologist and a naturalist in the Age of Enlightenment. He was one of the first to take an interest in ...
on the 1st and 8 August in 1770 to the Amsterdam Drawing Academy called the ''Teken-akademie''.
Background
Camper was a competent artist and draughtsman who had taken drawing lessons from Carel de Moor and his sonCarel Isaak de Moor
Carel Isaak de Moor (1695, Leiden – 1751, Rotterdam) was an 18th-century painter from the Northern Netherlands.
Carel Isaak de Moor was a pupil of his father, Carel de Moor. He also made etchings. He became a teacher himself and taught the an ...
in Leiden, and whose own pupils had been Martin van Marum, Johannes le Francq van Berkhey
Johannes le Francq van Berkhey (1729–1812) was an 18th-century painter, scientist, physician and poet from the Dutch Republic.
Biography
He was born in Leiden.
According to Roeland van Eynden and Adriaan van der Willigen in their dictionary ...
, and Wibrand Veltman. His broad interest in the natural sciences had led him to anatomy and he was praelector of the Amsterdam Surgeon's guild, a respected position that placed him also in the Amsterdam ''vroedschap'' or regency. He had published papers and lectures on a variety of anatomy subjects, and came to the lectures with several engraved examples of popular art that he wanted to discuss on the basis of anatomy. He brought with him the skull of a baby, child, man, and elderly man, and two large canvasses with sketched drawings of the mathematical dimensions of the human head.report by Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, pp 386-393
On traditional drawing lessons
Camper's main points in his first lecture were that classical drawing lessons from the time of Vitruvius
Vitruvius (; c. 80–70 BC – after c. 15 BC) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work entitled '' De architectura''. He originated the idea that all buildings should have three attribut ...
, including the teachings of Dürer and Perreault, were based on an incorrect assumption that the human head was oval at all ages, and he proceeded to prove this with his dimensions of the skulls. He also remarked that none of the various humans of modern "nations" such as Europeans, Moors
The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages.
Moors are not a distinct or ...
or Kalmyk people adhere to the classic form of head so remarkable in Grecian sculpture. The travelogues of Plinius and de Buffon made mention of practises in infancy which caused these national characteristics, such as Chinese women pulling their eye lids to the sides, or African Moors pressing their noses flat, or Europeans pressing their ears flat with caps tied tight. Camper claimed this was all nonsense and the forms of people's faces (and their skulls) were related to their living environments. He then proceeded to demonstrate on his sketches, by shortening the chin he could transform a likeness of a man to an old man, and by adjusting the facial angle, he changed a Moor into a European, and he was so successful in this demonstration with a few lines of chalk, that the hall cheered.
A new drawing method based on facial angle
His first lecture had dwelled on the skull's form among ages and among these three nations, and the second lecture (which was so well populated by students that the hall proved too small) was intended as a practical guide how to better make portraits that looked like the subject. For this he brought with him more sketches in the same dimensions as the first two that by means of arrangement along the dimension lines could be easily compared for sketching. He discussed the classical facial angle using the plaster cast of Apollo that was in the lecture hall. The artist-collectorCornelis Ploos van Amstel
Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726, in Weesp – 1798, in Amsterdam), was an eighteenth-century Dutch painter and art collector.
Biography
According to the RKD, he was a pupil of Norbert van Bloemen and Jacobus Buys, and later became a membe ...
first published notes on Camper's lectures in the Leiden literature society proceedings in 1770 in which a book was promised with engravings, and though Reinier Vinkeles made engravings for this purpose in 1785, a book was only posthumously published by Camper's son Adriaan Gilles Camper
Adriaan Gilles Camper (March 31, 1759 – February 5, 1820) was a 19th-century Dutch mathematics and physics professor at the University of Franeker who took to politics and became a statesman in his later years. He was the son of Petrus Camper i ...
in 1791 after Camper senior died.
Legacy
Camper's work was later quoted again and again, and his engraved drawings were used to prove that he had tried to show a hierarchy of facial angles from the orangutan to the European, but this was never part of either of the two lectures. In fact, he was only trying to help artists make better portraits, and remarked that of all the great masters of art that can be observed in engravings such as Rubens, van Dyk, and Jordaans only the Haarlemmer Cornelis Visscher
Cornelis Visscher (1629 in Haarlem – 1658 in Haarlem), was a Dutch Golden Age engraver and the brother of Jan de Visscher and Lambert Visscher.
Biography
According to Houbraken he was an able etcher who made famous prints (in his lifetime), an ...
had ever been able to draw the head of a Moor correctly.
Though Georges Cuvier felt that Camper's sketches showed the superiority of the white man in beauty as being the closest to the Classic ideal, this was against the views of Camper. Camper claimed that both edges of the spectrum were monsters, which is to say that orangutans and apes (with facial angle 42-50 degrees) were just as ugly as Sophocles' Medusa
In Greek mythology, Medusa (; Ancient Greek: Μέδουσα "guardian, protectress"), also called Gorgo, was one of the three monstrous Gorgons, generally described as winged human females with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Those ...
engraved in profile by Bernard Picart
Bernard Picart or Picard (11 June 1673 – 8 May 1733), was a French draughtsman, engraver, and book illustrator in Amsterdam, who showed an interest in cultural and religious habits.
Life
Picart was born in rue Saint-Jacques, Paris as ...
for Philipp von Stosch
Baron Philipp von Stosch (22 March 1691 – 7 November 1757) was a Prussian antiquarian who lived in Rome and Florence.
Life
Stosch was born in Küstrin (today Kostrzyn in Poland) in the Neumark region of Brandenburg. In 1709, with the ble ...
's "Pierres Antiques Gravées". The facial angles of Moors and Kalmyks was calculated to be 70 degrees, and that of a European 80 degrees.
The original report of these lectures in the proceedings of the literature society is listed as one of the 1000 most important texts in the Canon of Dutch Literature.
References
* ''Verhandeling van Petrus Camper over het natuurlijk verschil der wezenstrekken in menschen van onderscheiden landaart en ouderdom; over het schoon in antyke beelden en gesneedene steenen. Gevolgd door een voorstel van eene nieuwe manier om hoofden van allerleye menschen met zekerheid te tekenen. Naa des Schrijvers dood uitgegeven door zijnen zoon Adriaan Gilles Camper'', 1791text and engravings
in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek) {{DEFAULTSORT:Facial Angles 1791 non-fiction books Art history books Dutch non-fiction books Anthropometry Books of lectures