Profile of an Oriental Man - Etching - 17th Century

17th Century

The Profile is an original etching artwork realized by Thomas Holloway for Johann Caspar Lavater's "Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to Promote the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind",...

The Physiognomy - The Profile is an original etching artwork realized by Thomas Holloway for Johann Caspar Lavater's "Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to Promote the Knowledge and th...

Sketch of a Man in Profile 17th Century French School Ink on paper Image Size: 10 1/2 x 7 inches (26.5 x 17.5 cm) Framed Provenance The estate of Joseph McCrindle Christies Old Masters and British Pictures and Old Master Drawings Sale 12th December 2008 This highly worked picture shows us a man depicted in profile is seen interacting with a scene that extends beyond the boundaries of the paper's composition, the pen strokes intricately portraying the man's face, rendering a detailed, textured complexion. He points his left hand out to something in the distance, with a look of almost alarm. The artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609-64) did a series of oriental head studies. The exotic headgear that he wears and this type of oriental head studies, had its principal source was of course Rembrandt, who etched many similar heads during the 1630s. In the seventeenth-century Western European imagination, the turbaned figure represented the epitome of alterity: the Ottoman Turk. Ottoman costume...

François de Hérain (1877-1962) was a French painter, sculpture and engraver. He realized a number of paintings of scenes in French Algeria and Morocco. He wa...