Looking good for Friday night...

Why do some faces set my pulse racing and not others? If this has ever crossed your mind, you are not alone. In the past, many have tried to use science to decode the elusive quality of beauty and many are still trying; see David Perrett's latest book In your Face: the new science of human attraction as an example. This relatively small but important part of our bodies certainly holds a deep fascination whether you are a scientist or simply looking for love. But is beauty just in the eye of the beholder?

This Friday evening 6-10pm 7th October a free event at the National Portrait Gallery, London, (see 'Glamour Factory' for full details) will feature images and curios from the Library. It will take place in Room 16 and is called 'What is Beauty?' as part of the Image is Everthing section. Here the concepts of beauty and physiognomy will be related to film stars of today, will your favourite be there? The night is inspired by classic Hollywood portait photography and features talks, music and activities.

Aided by the judicious use of a kohl pencil I will also be road-testing an eighteenth-century forehead reader to discover if it holds any surprises for a modern-day audience. It will be an informal session ending around 20.45hrs

Are there really rules of beauty all good-looking people conform to? Join the debate and take advantage of other talks by experts such as Semir Zeki (Professor of Neuroaesthetics, UCL) and Dr David Gems (Institute of Healthy Aging, UCL). You can even be photographed like a celebrity too. If you feel like putting on the style, black and white is the theme of this glamourous evening.

Images:
Plate engraving illustrating a personification of 'Beauty' by Isaac Fuller and Pierce Tempest, 1709 from Wellcome Images (image number L0035394)

Natural beauty, digital illustration by Marina Caruso from Wellcome Images (image number B0007013)

Wellcome Library Insight - Fascinating Faces

This Thursday afternoon (16th June) offers another chance to explore the provocative idea that faces can be 'read', through our free Fascinating Faces 'Insight' session.

This session will explore face reading, from its origins in Ancient Greece and China up to present day security debates on facial recognition.

Our Insight sessions give visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. Sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from a member of Library staff.

This Thursday's session starts at 3pm, and tickets are available from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 1.30pm onwards. For more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Image: J.C. Lavater, Essays on physiognomy, translated by Henry Hunter, D.D. London: John Murray, 1789-1798. Volume I, page 96, group of faces set in a circle.

Wellcome Library Insights: June - July

Our popular Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. These free sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections.

Details of June and July's Insights have just been released. They are:

Fascinating Faces - 16th June, 3pm-4pm
(Learn about the provocative idea that our faces can be 'read' - is it an art or a science?)

Women, Health and Healing - 23rd June, 3pm-4pm
(Explore the changing attitudes of women in medicine and attitudes to female healers through the centuries)

Henry Wellcome: His Life and Work - 28th July, 6pm-7pm
(Find out more about our founder as an individual, a businessman and as a collector).

For more details on how to attend the sessions, please follow the links above to the appropriate pages on the Wellcome Collection website.

Image: Seven portraits of women, compared for their beauty and prudence. Drawing, c. 1789 (Wellcome Library no. 28698i)

May item of the month: English manual of practical chiromancy or palmistry, 1648

Ever wished you had the ability to accurately judge a person’s character from their appearance? Perhaps you want to know when your baby will be born? Or what message your new beard is giving to strangers? Well, you’re in luck. The Wellcome Library Archives and Manuscripts department have just the thing for you!

MS.8727 is a newly catalogued manual of practical chiromancy or palmistry, dating from 1648. The manuscript also includes sections on physiognomy and metoscopy, or the reading of lines on the forehead.

Using this manual, we learn that long, white fingernails are found on sickly, feverish people, whilst those with short, crooked nails are proud people who “delight in superfluity.” People with white or grey hair are slippery with “evill manners.” Narrow eyebrows of pale gold which consist only of short hairs demonstrate that a person is “one of good nature, apt to everything, fearful, but given to revenge.”

Even a person’s facial hair can be used to judge their personality. The man in the picture above, with his handsome beard, is apparently “melancholique. Also ingenious, sincere, cordiall, constant, resolute and valiant.” The manual suggests he would make a good soldier. However, if you are unable to grow such an impressive beard, remember that a lack of facial hair will lead people to believe you have “an evill nature."



Expectant parents are given very specific advice on how to calculate exactly when a baby will be born by reading their own palms. For example: “if that line ends in the plaine of Mars it is borne in March or October upon a Tuesday; if the crosses or lines go towards Mercury and end there, they are borne in May or August Wednesday.”

Palmistry can also be used to amaze your friends by correctly guessing a stranger’s birth date: “if that line end toward the hill of Luna and it have a crosse, sure he or she was borne on 10th June on Monday.”

If you are interested in finding out more about the subject of face reading, the Wellcome Library Insights session on Fascinating Faces is next being held on Thursday 16 June at 3 O'Clock. More information about this and other events can be found on the Wellcome Collection website.

London Faces: new 'Insight'

This Saturday, 2nd October, the library will feature a new Insight talk - London Faces - to coincide with Story of London events. Learn how Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens and James Gillray made their own contributions to the fascinating history of physiognomy (the 'science' of face reading). See bitingly satirical pictures, original nineteenth century material and even tea towels as we revisit three key inhabitants of England's capital from a very different perspective.

Held in the Wellcome Library at 2.30pm-3.30pm. Please see details as number are limited: Wellcome Collection

Rev : the Gothic Years

Passing under my nose in the Rare Materials Room this week was a fascinating tome by the Reverend Thomas Price, writing passionately in 1829 about Goths (not the pasty-faced variety clothed in black but the ancient tribe).

Wrestling with the belief that all humankind is descended from the same parents, Price considers how we ended up looking different (skin colour, physical type, hair variations, etc). It is a fascinating insight into the age before Darwin's theory of evolution. For example, Price observed that dark-eyed people lived near coal mines and he believed this was just one example of environment shaping our appearance. He did not worry about scientific proof but concludes that this must be a significant factor.

Normans, Goths, Celts, Picts and many others come under close scrutiny as does ancient Roman writings on what these people looked like. The Roman authors were very much at odds with each other over the distinguishing features of other 'national' tribes. Even as long ago as that, appearances, it seems, are very much in the eye of the beholder.

Wellcome Library Insight - Fascinating Faces

This Thursday afternoon (6th May) offers another chance to explore the provocative idea that faces can be 'read', through our free Fascinating Faces 'Insight' session.

This session will explore face reading, from its origins in Ancient Greece and China up to present day security debates on facial recognition.

Our Insight sessions give visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. Sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from a member of Library staff.

This Thursday's session starts at 3pm, and tickets are available from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 1.30pm onwards. For more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Identity Exposed

How do you spot a liar? What features do aggressive hockey players have in common? Calling all seekers of the shady secrets of face-reading, this is your chance to delve into a centuries old world of knowledge known to its practitioners as Physiognomy.

See its powerful influence across many cultures and wonder at the free 'teeth and ears' guide. Your host for this adventure in human character is awaiting you at the Wellcome Library. Just turn up on Thursday 3rd December in time for a 3.00pm start for Fascinating Faces, the talk lasts for an hour in the viewing room. You may never look at people the same way again...

Death of the 'Criminal Man'

Professor Cesare Lombroso died on this day, one hundred years ago. Ironically his remains became part of his own museum, his head and internal organs joining those of the criminals which he studied throughout his career.

The Wellcome Library has recently purchased a rare early work on genius and insanity along with several letters to accompany its other holdings by this influential author. His chief work L'Uomo Deliquente (Criminal Man) in 1876 helped found the field of criminal anthropology.

Lombroso characterized criminals as atavistic ‘throwbacks’ to a more primitive form of man - out-of-place evolutionary anomalies less developed than their peers. Fortunately these ‘moral defectives’ could be recognised by key facial features. A large jaw, a prominent brow and low forehead were indicators of this type.

However, holes appeared in his argument and fellow scientists questioned his evidence because he did not use a control group of non-criminals against which to test his theory. Consequently the phrase ‘Lombrosian fallacy’ came into circulation and the idea of a ‘born criminal’ lost its appeal.

Despite these later set backs this Italian professor enjoyed considerable success and influence on popular culture of the late Victorian Era; he is cited in Tolstoy’s Resurrection (1899) and Stoker’s Dracula (1897) as an expert on the nature of criminality.

Lombroso’s employment of photography as a tool for research and identification ultimately lead the French Police Department to adopt the now standard use of the ‘mug-shot’ as a routine part of the arrest process. His interest in this medium was not unique: Sir Francis Galton in England had previously sought to show a criminal type through photography but wisely abandoned the idea early on.

Lombroso’s theories were pervasive and provocative, helping to galvanise opinion that crime was primarily a social problem, not a biological one. He is honoured in sculptural form in his home town of Turin.

If you are interested in the wider history of face reading and facial types there will a free talk held in the library in December. Details will appear on this blog nearer the time.