Fig. 94.—Face of inferior type prominence of the maxillary bones (prognathism).
The precise relation between height and breadth constitutes the index of visage, which is analogous to the index that we have already observed for the cranium.
Normally there is a correspondence in form between the cranium and the face; dolichocephalics are also leptoprosopic; and brachycephalics are chameprosopics; normally, also, mesaticephaly is found in conjunction with mesoprosopy; but owing to the phenomena of hybridism or pathological causes (rickets), it may also happen that such correspondence is wanting; and that we have instead, for instance, a leptoprosopic face with a brachycephalic cranium or vice versa.
Accordingly, long and short faces are characteristics of race almost as important as the cephalic index. But leptoprosopy and chamaeprosopy are not in themselves sufficient to determine the form of the face. On the contrary, in the case of living persons it is necessary also to take into consideration the contour of the visage, which contains characteristics relating to race, age and sex. The races which are held to be inferior have facial contours that are more or less angular; those that are held to be superior have, on the contrary, a rotundity of contour; men have a more angular facial contour, in comparison with that of women; while children have a contour of face that is distinctly rotund.
The angularities of the face are due to certain skeletal prominences, owing either to an excessive development of the zygomata (cheek-bones), or to a development of the maxillaries, which sometimes produce a salience of the lower corners of the mandible, and at others a prominence of the maxillary arch (prognathism).
Accordingly, the facial contours may be either rounded or angular, and that, too, independently of the facial type; because in either case the visage may be either long or short.
Depending upon the rounded facial contours, the visage may be distinguished as ellipsoidal or oval; we may meet with faces that are long, short or medium ellipsoids (leptoprosopic, chameprosopic, mesoprosopic faces), even to a point where the contour is almost circular: the orbicular face. Similarly, the oval faces may be classified as long, short and medium ovals. The so-called typical Roman visage is mesoprosopic, with an ellipsoidal contour. The faces of Cavalieri and of the Fornarina (Figs. 85, 87), celebrated for their beauty, are mesoprosopic ovals—and the exceptionally beautiful face of Maria Mancini is a mesoprosopic ellipse (Fig. 86).
Countenances with rounded and mesoprosopic contours belong to the Mediterranean race, and the more closely they come to the mean average of that type and to a fusion of contours, the more beautiful they are.