216 



The Journal of Heredity 



matter has gone forever, the one anatom- 

 ical record most likely to reveal the 

 inner brain is the face itself, which may 

 be regarded in more ways than one as 

 the next thing to it. 



THE USE OF PORTRAITS 



In order to make satisfactory studies 

 of ancient portraits, good photographic 

 copies are needed, and many specimens 

 must be brought together for comparison 

 and analysis. Here we are in an advan- 

 tageous position over our forefathers, 

 who did not have photography to make 

 possible a large collection of good copies. 

 Also, to make a fair comparison, a 

 collection of complete portraits of some 

 one race or historical group is desirable. 



In the collected photographs of por- 

 traits in famous national galleries we, to 

 a certain extent, have reasonable com- 

 pleteness, though all portraits must be 

 classified according to period and na- 

 tionality. The work on Early Portraits 

 in the National Portrait Gallerv; Lon- 

 don, (1400-1500) and Volume 11 (1600- 

 1700) form suitable collections for 

 studies of measurement and analysis, 

 since all or nearly all belong to the 

 strictly English breed. 



PORTRAITS OF THE FOUNDERS 



Recently Charles K. Bolton, Librar- 

 ian of the Boston Athenaeum, has 

 brought together and published a very 

 important collection of photogravures 

 of all the portraits obtainable of the 

 founders of the colonies in North Amer- 

 ica who came before 1701. Such a 

 collection is valuable and satisfying on 

 account of its completeness. It is not 

 likely that more than a very few por- 

 traits, not in the collection, will ever be 

 unearthed. As the author truly says: 



"The value of the pictures here re- 

 produced will increase with the years, 

 for they represent men and women who 

 came together from the countries of 

 Europe to found colonies which have 

 been federated into a great republic. 

 Inevitably a few portraits have been 

 overlooked, and when these have been 

 added we shall have between the covers 

 of one work all the faces that we shall 



ever see from that historic past. The 

 portraits are of value for their evidence 

 of dress, armor, and fashion; but there 

 is a still more fundamental significance 

 in these faces as a group, for they show 

 the type of the immigrant of the seven- 

 teenth century — austere, adventurous, 

 and resolute." 



Mr. Bolton in his Introduction accepts 

 my conclusion, reached some years ago 

 from a study of Italian, French, Flemish 

 and English portraiture, that the face of 

 the Nordic has actually changed since 

 the beginning of the sixteenth century. ^ 

 The greatest change is in the region of 

 the eyes. The eyes are now more often 

 near together than formerly. This 

 means that the breadth at the top of 

 the nose which is generally associated 

 with eyes wide apart, is frequent in early 

 portraits and disappears with the course 

 of time. This unusual breadth at the 

 top of the nose is indicated by the 

 arrows in Figs. 13-16. The eyes in these 

 portraits are far apart. 



The second point of distinction is the 

 distance between the eyebrow and the 

 pupil of the eye itself, that is. the eye- 

 brow in the early portraits is often high 

 above the eye, the upper eyelid pre- 

 senting a flat surface. The eye is not 

 set in under the orbital arch as is usual 

 today. The cheek-bones are somewhat 

 less prominent now than formerly, but 

 otherwise the face has changed but 

 little. Figs. 13, 14, and 15 show the eye- 

 brow very high above the eye, as is 

 indicated at the points of the arrows. 



NOT AN ARTISTIC MANNERISM 



Portraits are not, like photographs, 

 mechanical records. Consequently the 

 personal equations of the different art- 

 ists must be taken into consideration. 

 There is. for instance, the well-recog- 

 nized "Sir Peter Lely eye," and one is 

 inclined to think that much of this 

 change in eye-form is due to an im- 

 provement in the art of painting. But 

 this will not stand the test of compara- 

 tive analysis. While most of the earli- 

 est portraits are crude in their primi- 

 tiveness (those prior to Holbein, for 

 instance), the portraits by Holbein 



2 Problems in Eugenics. London, 1912, p. 251. 



