Charles le Brun’s Human-Animal Hybrids (1806) – The Public Domain Review
Still, he admits it’s true that prominent men have prominent noses — everyone since Aristotle has reached agreement on this. An aquiline nose, we learn, is a necessary part of a hero’s face, accompanied by a broad and raised forehead, thick eyebrows, and eyes angled so that “the inner corners make an angle above the horizontal line which then cuts through the outer corner only.” Deviation from this theme is a clear sign that Minerva, the patron goddess of geniuses, never came to visit. The beak-like nose is good only for the eagle-like, who is resolute in his toga: le Brun’s raven-man, frowning at the viewer and cawing in three-quarter profile, is prone to even the ‘most reprehensible’ passions (perhaps this is because, as Aristotle said arguedthe nose is under the rule of Venus). The parrot man, with his soft cloth hat, may remind you of a Renaissance philosopher – but the beak of a parrot is of course a clear sign of the baillard outréan extreme chatterbox.
