LAVATER’S PHYSIOGNOMY AND AVRAMOVIĆ’S STUDIES OF HEADS An important part of Dimitrije Avramovic’s opus consisted of copies of portraits modeled after old masters and contemporary painters such as Friedrich von Amerling, created...
moreLAVATER’S PHYSIOGNOMY AND AVRAMOVIĆ’S STUDIES OF HEADS
An important part of Dimitrije Avramovic’s opus consisted of copies of portraits modeled after old masters and contemporary painters such as Friedrich von Amerling, created during the author’s training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1830s. These kinds of his occupations were directly associated with the physiognomic studies of Johann Kaspar Lavater in which he attempted to reach to the very essence of a human being by analyzing faces and heads. Lavater’s major book Physiognomische Fragmente, zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe, published between 1775 and 1778, and then edited and translated throughout Europe, has played an important role in visual arts. The physiognomic theory, based on the interpretation of head shapes and „reading” of faces, has been promptly accepted as a new „science” which could have clarified the relationship between someone’s facial features and character. In accordance with medical, ethical and esthetic discourses of the Age of Enlightenment, physiognomy has reflected ideals of the period upon the human body, confirming them
via analysis of the oeuvre of the famous painters such as Raphael, Dürer, Holbein or Rubens.
Following popular physiognomic ideas, Avramović used his studies of heads to examine carefully the problem of expressing character and soul of the portrayed person. His copies of old masters show that the artist always set his focus to the visual analysis of faces and instead of creating portraits in a narrow sense, he turned them into expressions
of a particular mental or physical state. In 1833 he made The Head of an Old Man modeled after an unidentified Italian master, then in 1835 a copy of Greuze’s Portrait of a Young Girl and in 1837 Portrait of an Unknown Older Man as well as Portrait of a Woman made after Rembrandt’s paintings. The following year, in 1838, he painted
over thirty studies, some modeled after Amerling while the others were created independently, from nature. Whether he was preparing for a portraitist or a painter of historical compositions, he practiced painting those fine facial movements in pursuit of „catching” the mood and character i.e. of presenting a person's soul.
Just like Amerling, Avramovic used somnolence, yearning and contemplation on his models faces as part of the emotional instrumentarium with the aim of illuminating their physical and mental conditions. Light and shadows were employed to visually clarify moods and to emphasize one particular emotion on face. Finally, Avramović
has sought to achieve via artistic means the same goals his contemporaries aspired to and which also Lavater himself tended to achieve – to reach to true character of a human soul.
