Embodying Ethos: Anguier, Poussin, and the Concept of Corporal Expression in the French Academy

The concept of expression in seventeenth-century art history has generally been considered synonymous with the rendering of the transitory "passions of the soul," largely due to Charles Le Brun's 1668 lecture to the French Academy. This study will reveal that expression also involved the representation of character through the physiognomic form of the body, demonstrated in the theory and practice of Michel Anguier (c. 1612-86), a highly-esteemed French sculptor and academician. His 1652 series of bronze gods and goddesses offers an important case study, for previously its perplexing stylistic diversity could only be rationalized as "eclecticism." When viewed in relation to Anguier's later conference "On the Manner of Representing the Divinities According to their Temperaments," it is shown that this stylistic diversity results from his theory of corporal expression, derived from the study of ancient sculpture alongside Nicolas Poussin. The sculptor's remarks reveal that such works were informed by a knowledge of humoral physiology, which remained a viable explanation for temperamental distinctions in the seventeenth century. Since humoral constitution was thought to additionally determine physiognomic appearance, Anguier and Poussin considered how proportion, contour, and the overall dessein of the body externalized temperament. In so doing they imitated the precedent of ancient sculpture, as well as the works of Raphael, who is shown to have similarly incorporated humoral theory. When viewed in the broader context of debates concerning expression in the French Academy, Anguier's compelling emphasis on the expressive physiognomy of the body provides a crucial complement to Le Brun's privileging of facial pathognomics. Like rhetorical eloquence, expression involved the representation of both pathos and ethos, with the principal aim of affecting the viewer. By relating the sculptor's preference for the forceful grand maniere to the grandiloquent manner of rhetoric, we can comprehend how figural style was conceived as an affective means of expressing character.