A. L. Genovese – Abstract

The study aims to analyze the interpretation of Raphael's physiognomy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, according to Lavater’s physiognomic discipline in Physiognomische Fragmente first, and to phrenological doctrine later. These pseudo sciences, with the help of his self-portraits or presumed such, proposed a reading of the face of Raphael, conditioned by the romantic idea of the sublimity of his genius, a union of intellectual forces and moral qualities, managing to manipulate the known images in order to make their theories more visible.