| Abstract |
In terms of documenting “reality”, portrait paintings are much easier to be manipulated than portrait photography. Despite of the attempt of “authentically” recording the appearance and characteristics of the sitter, portrait paintings do not neutrally reflect the reality. They carry unconsciously the codes that formulate the aesthetic ideal of the community. When this media is employed to portray the commoners, the content and purposes of the artworks were different from the conventional portrait painting. In western art history, we could find that head portraits were often executed without background depictions and were presented in an exactly identical way as the studies of physiognomy. Physiognomy in the 18th century was largely recognized as a branch of scientific knowledge. The system of knowledge was used by Nazi portrait painters to combine “scientific” knowledge with “objective” observations, to formulate a new ideal of aesthetic, and to provide strong visual materials for Nazi racial theory. By examining the relationship among the aesthetics (Romantic Realism), scientific knowledge (physiognomy), and ideology (racial theory), this article attempts to tease out how the concept of an ideal human race in the Nazi racial theory was legitimized and accepted through the visual media of portraiture. |
