Early Modern Faces catalogue (final proofs) (original) (raw)
Related papers
FACES , in: artibus et historiae no. 75 (XXXVIII), 2017
FACES (Faces, Art, and Computerized Evaluation Systems) is a project that, after two years of research support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), has established proof of concept for the application of face recognition technology to works of portrait art. In the application of face recognition technology to photographed human faces, a number of difficulties are inherent in a real or perceived alteration of appearance of the face through variations in facial expression, age, angle of pose, and so on. With works of portrait art, not only do all these problems pertain, but these works also have their own additional challenges. Most notably, portrait art does not provide what might be called a photographic likeness but rather one that goes through a process of visual interpretation on the part of the artist. After establishing the initial parameters of the application of this technology, the main goal of FACES has been to test the ability of the FACES algorithm to restore lost identities to works of portrait art, something our research has shown is clearly feasible. Our work has also suggested a number of other potential applications, both using the FACES algorithm and employing basic concept of FACES in an altered form. The use of the FACES algorithm should not be thought of as limited to facial recognition in the sense of identification alone. An altered form of the technology used in FACES might also be used to study a wide range of other applications such as adherence or non-adherence to widely recognized artistic canons, formal or informal; the identification of variations in the practice of an individual artist (over time, with different subjects, with different genres, after exposure to external influences, and so on); probable bodies of work of anonymous artists; difference in larger bodies of works (art historical ‘big data’); even to detect the change of masons in medieval building.
Charlotte Behr: The materiality of faces
Barbaric Splendour, ed by Toby F. Martin with Wendy Morrison, 2020
From different times, in different parts of Europe north of the Alps objects decorated with anthropomorphic faces appear in the archaeological record. In the 5th century BC and in the 5th century AD faces gained a visual and material presence when they were placed in prominent positions on a wide range of objects. And they remained important pictorial elements in Celtic Latène and early medieval Germanic art. By concentrating on faces I aim to argue in this paper that there is some, if tenuous, evidence for stylistic and iconographical continuities from Latène to early medieval faces but also and probably more importantly for conceptual continuities reflecting the idea of the anthropomorphic face in art. By creating the faces, giving them a visual and material reality, they affected actively the beholders.
The Hybrid Face Paradoxes of the Visage in the Digital Era, 2023
The chapter addresses five theoretical attitudes with regard to portraiture: (i) the Renaissance painting tradition, (ii) the Baroque era tradition, (iii) the representation of heads in portraits by Francis Bacon, (iv) the conception of photographic portraits espoused by Roland Barthes during his seminars at the Collège de France, and (v) the contemporary facial images used to produce deepfake videos. These five theoretical attitudes are performances of theoretical positions of portraiture and are exemplified in this text by some famous portraits. The fundamental objective is to study the transformation of the figure-ground relation through the centuries and to analyze how the relations between the totality of the visual composition, and its parts are modeled and remodeled in these five different types of portraits in order to understand the relation between portraits and various conceptions of individuality.
This thematic issue of the German art history journal "kritische berichte" gathers analytical approaches to the ‘phenomenon face’ from different disciplines: neurophysiology, philosophy of the body, cultural history, surgery, medieval history, and the history of art. In their contributions, the authors examine the face as medium and material, as mise-en-scene and matter, as mirror and membrane, producer and recipient – as a cultural construction and a human determinant. The essays are spurred by their author’s profound involvement with the questions: WHAT IS A FACE? What did and what does it mean, culturally, socially, psychologically, physiologically, aesthetically, historically? What might it look like in the future? What are our assumptions about what a face represents, what it means to lose one’s face, or live with someone else’s face. Often enough, we think of faces as identities. But, what does a face tell about ‘us’ – individually, culturally, and as a species? Perception and imagination, the belief in images and image making, they all overlap in the face. The book’s trans-disciplinary approach is a first step toward a cultural history of the face. It includes essays by Jean-Claude Schmitt, Bernard Andrieu, Sigrid Weigel, Georges Didi-Huberman, Claudia Schmoelders, Jonathan Cole, and an interview with the facial surgeon Rainer Schmelzeisen.
Decline of Perceived Beauty: Facial Representations between the 18th and 20th Century in Western Art
Beauty: Exploring Critical Perspectives, 2016
This study focuses on the question of beauty standards defined by scientific methodology in terms of face symmetry and averageness. This definition correlates with art history and the human faces depicted in a large set of artworks. Recent research in evolutionary psychology and neuro-aesthetics suggests that the attractiveness of a face can be conceptualized as the sum of a varied set of distinct features. These aspects are described in terms of averageness, symmetry, sexual dimorphism, pleasant expressions, and youthfulness. First we collected a dataset of more than 120,000 paintings and then applied industry standard face recognition algorithms to extract facial traits. Then we studied how portraits of faces could be considered more or less beautiful across time and lastly, we noted when beauty trends evolved. Our study focuses on 18th century painting styles such as Rococo and Neoclassicism, which adhere to strict conventions of symmetry and realistic depictions of the human anatomy. It extends until the Impressionist and the Avant-Garde eras that broke with these conventions. Our analysis reveals a particular decline in face averageness and symmetry that demonstrates a shift in artistic styles over time. It evolved from a naturalistic representation of the human face, which is to say, from bearing resemblance to the natural human anatomy to an abstract representation that deconstructed facial features, such as in Picasso's paintings. A face averageness graph exhibits a sharp decline in averageness and symmetry from the 18th century onward indicating that beauty conventions and standards regarding the representation of the human face in art varies greatly. The early 20 th century marks a complete break in facial representation in portraits. This analysis also reveals a change in beauty perception and conventions arising at the beginning of the 20th century that expressed a newfound preoccupation for discovering and depicting facial features.
Studia archaeologica Brunensia, 2018
Vessels with human face application represent one of the groups from a whole set of Neolithic figurative and symbolic objects. These findings from Middle Neolithic period with few exceptions do not conform to the kind the variety and number species we encounter in Middle East and South Western Europe. Despite of this fact, it is a specific set of findings with depictions of humans, many of which by their level of artistic quality and expression of motive significantly exceed local standards. These findings used to be a subject of long lasting study in on our territory, which started at the end on 19th and beginning of 20th century. As it already implies from the title itself, identifications of this set of finds is based on anthropomorphic depiction which is applied to the surface of the pottery. The purpose of this article, however, is to emphasize that in addition to mentioned face motive, there are many additional characteristic features of face pots and their identification would offer a more complex view of the whole topic regarding ceramics with applied face motifs, especially in the light of their symbolic significance within Neolithic communities.