Anomaly and Norm

The idea that anomalous passions are an essential part of the human condition is clear in the iconography and literature of the Renaissance: this is evidenced in the extraordinary treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621), an enciclopedia about everything remarkable and anomalous that can happen to the human soul.

More than a century earlier, Albrecht Dürer  created perhaps his most famous work called Melancholy (1514), where the inextricable link between the exceptional and normal aspects of the human condition are translated to symbols, figures and objects. Even earlier, in 1494,  Hieronymus Bosch  in his painting “The Extraction of the Stone of Madness” depicted the cure for madness through the extraction  of the “stone of madness ” from the brain by characters who were themselves  portrayed as bizarre and anomalous.

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2. Phrenological Skull

The search for clues of psychic and moral qualities in the features of the human body dates back to ancient times, with the theory of humors and temperaments, but experiences a significant revival starting in the 13th century. In 1772, Johann Kaspar Lavater writes his book about physiognomy, representing types of faces linked to psychic peculiarities; a similar concept is the “Phrenological map” of Gall.

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3. Cesare Lombroso, L’uomo delinquente 1876

In the second half of the 19th century, in Italy, Cesare Lombroso collected skulls, heads, and photographs of bandits, thieves, and murderers, measured their bodily parameters, and described them in The Criminal Man. He was convinced of having identified the morphological key to criminal behaviour. Despite lacking any experimental foundation, his ideas left a lasting impact in the “popular psychology”: the “criminal face” or the “good person’s face” improperly link physical appearance with behaviour

Fondo Bevilacqua – MUSME