Four physiognomies expressing evil characters. Drawing, c. 1792.

Appears in the book in a chapter on the four temperaments

Lavater describes these as "atrocious characters". He begins to analyse them in terms of temperament but then exclaims "how little is conveyed by this enumeration! These represent four worthless men who appear to accuse, before our Lord, the woman taken in adultery ... All these would have given their suffrages to condemn Calas to the wheel: the first with a stupid and brutal hardness of heart, the second with a sanguinary phlegm, the third with seeming indifference, the fourth with an obstinate and deliberate cruelty". For the woman taken in adultery, see Bible. N.T. John 8.5; the case of Calas surfaces elsewhere in Lavater: see frame no. 9367

[London], 1792?

1 drawing : pencil

Wellcome Collection 29838i

One drawing in a group of drawings apparently prepared under the supervision of Thomas Holloway (1748-1827) for the English edition of J.C. Lavater, Essays on physiognomy, trans. Henry Hunter, London 1789-1798