Have you ever wondered what would have happened if humans had evolved from any other animal than monkeys, let’s say from a bull or lion or my personal favorite would be from a giraffe?! – Well, in Baroque Europe, artists, thinkers, philosophers gave quite a thought of the relation between the human physiognomy and evolution. One of these thinkers was Charles Le Brun, a 17th Century French painter, declared by the Louis XIV himself “the greatest French artist of all time”. Le Brun was a dominant figure in 17th-century French art and art theory.
Le Brun was a fine portraitist and an excellent draughtsman, but he was not fond of portrait or landscape painting, which he felt to be a mere exercise in developing technical prowess. Le Brun was deeply fascinated by the physiognomy and later took an interest in the study of the human physiognomy or more precisely in the relationship and the connection between the person’s character and his facial features. By taking the further exploration of this scientific field, Le Brun was curious to know how humans would have looked had they evolved from different animals.
So, he did impressive series of drawings entitled De la physionomie humaine et Animale(or The Human’s and animals physiognomy). The drawingsgive a perfect idea of how some of us would look like if we had evolved from a camel or owl or eagle.
The bizarre thing about these drawings is the fact they look more realistic that you would have imagined, and I swear that some of these drawings reminded me of some people I know.
