Faces and characters in the Baroque age: The “curious” physiognomy of Nicola Spadon

Abstract

The Augustinian theologian and preacher Nicola Spadon has intended to write his treatise entitled Studio di Curiosità, which has been published a dozen times in the mid-17th century, for the average reader who is interested in curiosities, in this case, in physiognomy. Spadon represents the real faces and characters of the Baroque age meanwhile describing specific male and female characteristics, he outlines some physiognomic portraits, which reflect the propensity for certain professions. This paper presents and analyzes some of them in comparison with the theses of the classic authors of physiognomy, also confirming the seventeenth-century's survival of the Aristotelian thesis of the medietas and that of the kalokagathia.