ABSTRACT
Gaspare Tagliacozzi summarized in one passage of De curtorum the centrality of the face for sixteenth-century selfhood. A beautiful human face, characterized by symmetry and proportion, was considered the measure of the length, breadth, and depth of the whole human body. Tagliacozzi specifies the rules to recognize a well-proportioned and symmetrical face. Pomponio Gaurico also gave the ratio for the analogy or proportion between the parts of the face and between the parts of the face and other parts of the body, which he called common measure. The art of plastic surgery found in physiognomy both an important source of legitimization and a source of operative principles to justify the enterprise of correcting disfigured faces. Della Porta’s book showcases a conception of the human face that came from physiognomy but spread beyond its disciplinary boundaries. The face is one stage in the historical process of the localization of the self away from the psychological-physical unity toward the brain.
