Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classificatin of Beauty in Woman

by Alexander Walker

But the grossest errors on this subject have been committed by Alison, who says: “Artists, in every age, have taken pains to ascertain the most exact measurement of the human form, and of all its parts.... If the beauty of form consisted in any original proportion, the productions of the fine arts would everywhere have testified it; and, in the works of the statuary and the painter, we should have found only this sole and sacred system of proportion. The fact however is, as every one knows, that, in such productions, no such rule is observed; that there is no one proportion of parts which belongs to the most beautiful productions of these arts; that the proportions of the Apollo, for instance, are different from those of the Hercules, the Antinous, the Gladiator, &c.; and that there are not, in the whole catalogue of ancient statues, two, perhaps, of which the proportions are actually the same.”

Now, I believe, we may say that this original or most perfect proportion is presented in the Apollo, which is not, as generally supposed, an example of peculiar, but of universal beauty—the locomotive system presenting as much strength as is compatible with agility, and as much agility as is compatible with strength, and any other modification of either ensuring diminution of power; while the vital and mental systems are equally perfect. Wherever this model is deviated from by the ancient artists it is peculiar beauty, I believe, that is represented.

He farther says: “They have imagined also various standards of this measurement; and many disputes have arisen, whether the length of the head, of the foot, or of the nose, was to be considered as this central and sacred standard. Of such questions and such disputes, it is not possible to speak with seriousness, when they occur in the present times.” So also Burke says: “It must be likewise shown, that these parts stand in such a relation to each other, that the comparison between them may be easily made, and that the affection of the mind may naturally result from it.”

Now, no man in his senses ever cared which of these measures was adopted, except as a matter of convenience, or ever imagined that peculiar virtue resided in any of them.

The following are some of the principal rules which either by intuition or with due definition, resulted from and guided the practice of the ancient Greeks.

First, in regard to the THINKING SYSTEM, when the ancient artists, either from taste or from principle, gave greater opening to the facial angle than eighty degrees, they believed that an increase of intelligence corresponded to that conformation. By increasing the angle beyond eighty-five degrees, they impressed upon their figures the grandest character, as we see in the heads of the Apollo, the Venus, and others whose facial angle extends to or exceeds ninety degrees.

In regard to the forehead, then, this afforded their rule for distinguishing beings of a superior kind. How well they observed the tendency of nature to increase that angle with the increase of some of the thinking faculties, we now know. This ideal rule was, therefore, admirably founded.

Whoever reflects on the nature of this angle will perceive that its increase tended nowise to raise the forehead, but to throw it forward, and therefore to lengthen the head. This conforms to the metaphor by which a long head is used for a wise head, and which has not yet given place to a broad head, preferred by the German craniologists, in compliment to their own organization.

With regard to the height of the forehead, it has already been observed that it was, among the ancient Greeks, more considerable than its breadth, as may be seen by the busts of their most illustrious men. Still, neither the natural nor the ideal forehead much exceeded the space from the forehead to the bottom of the nose, or that from the nose to the bottom of the chin.

Winckelmann accordingly says: “The forehead to be beautiful should be low [meaning, as his expressions elsewhere show, no higher than the other two spaces just mentioned]; and its lowness was so fixed among the ideas of beauty by the Grecian artists, that it serves as a mark to distinguish modern heads from ancient. The reason of this appears founded in the very rules of proportion, which, as in the whole human body, was among the ancients tripartite: thus, the face also was divided into three parts; so that the forehead should be of the same length as the nose, and the remainder of the face to the chin of the same length likewise. This proportion was founded on observation, and we may at any time convince ourselves of it in any individual with a low forehead, by covering with a finger the hair at the top of the forehead, so as to render it so much higher, and we shall then see a want of harmony of proportion and how detrimental a high forehead is to beauty.”