DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16243#0050
i6
PEOPLE OF INDIA
a Syrian Christian baby of undoubted native parentage with
bright carroty hair. The Syrian Christians of South Travancore
say, indeed, that they differ from Northerners in having a red
tinge to the moustache.
When we turn to the definite or anthropometric characters
we find ourselves upon firmer ground. The
Definite physical ■ , c i • r
characters. ic'ea °' aPPlying instruments of precision to
the measurement of the human body was
familiar to the Egyptians and the Greeks, both of whom appear
to have made extensive experiments with the object of arriving
at a " canon" or ideal type, showing the proportions which
various parts of the body should bear to the entire figure and
to each other. Such canons were usually expressed either in
terms of a particular member of which the rest were supposed
to be multiples, or in fractional parts of the entire stature.
Thus, according to Lepsius, the Egyptian canon is based on
the length of the middle finger and this measure is supposed
to be contained nineteen times in the full stature, three times
in the head and neck, eight times in the arm, and so forth.
The Greek canon, on the other hand, as restored by Quetelet,
expresses the limbs and other dimensions in thousandth parts
of the entire stature. Concerning this canon a curious story
is told by Topinard, not without interest in its bearings upon
the relations of Egyptian and Greek art. In 1866, the eminent
French anthropologist Broca was asked on behalf of an artist
who was engaged in the attempt to reconstruct the Greek
standard, to provide a skeleton corresponding in its propor-
tions to certain measurements derived from an examination
of the Belvedere Apollo. After some search Broca found in
the Museum of the Anthropological Society at Paris a skeleton
of the type required. It was that of a Soudanese negro named
Abdullah, and from this Broca concluded that the famous
statue of Apollo had been modelled on the Egyptian canon,
which in his opinion had been derived by Egyptian sculptors
from the study of the Nubian negroes whom they employed
as models.
The Roman canon handed down in the treatise De Archi-
tecture of Vitruvius was taken up and developed in the early
days of the Renaissance by Leo Battista Alberti, himself, like
Vitruvius, an architect, and a curious enquirer into the secret
ways of nature and of the human frame. Forty years later
Leonardo da Vinci, in his Trattato dc/ia pittura, expressed the
general opinion that the proportions of the body should be
PEOPLE OF INDIA
a Syrian Christian baby of undoubted native parentage with
bright carroty hair. The Syrian Christians of South Travancore
say, indeed, that they differ from Northerners in having a red
tinge to the moustache.
When we turn to the definite or anthropometric characters
we find ourselves upon firmer ground. The
Definite physical ■ , c i • r
characters. ic'ea °' aPPlying instruments of precision to
the measurement of the human body was
familiar to the Egyptians and the Greeks, both of whom appear
to have made extensive experiments with the object of arriving
at a " canon" or ideal type, showing the proportions which
various parts of the body should bear to the entire figure and
to each other. Such canons were usually expressed either in
terms of a particular member of which the rest were supposed
to be multiples, or in fractional parts of the entire stature.
Thus, according to Lepsius, the Egyptian canon is based on
the length of the middle finger and this measure is supposed
to be contained nineteen times in the full stature, three times
in the head and neck, eight times in the arm, and so forth.
The Greek canon, on the other hand, as restored by Quetelet,
expresses the limbs and other dimensions in thousandth parts
of the entire stature. Concerning this canon a curious story
is told by Topinard, not without interest in its bearings upon
the relations of Egyptian and Greek art. In 1866, the eminent
French anthropologist Broca was asked on behalf of an artist
who was engaged in the attempt to reconstruct the Greek
standard, to provide a skeleton corresponding in its propor-
tions to certain measurements derived from an examination
of the Belvedere Apollo. After some search Broca found in
the Museum of the Anthropological Society at Paris a skeleton
of the type required. It was that of a Soudanese negro named
Abdullah, and from this Broca concluded that the famous
statue of Apollo had been modelled on the Egyptian canon,
which in his opinion had been derived by Egyptian sculptors
from the study of the Nubian negroes whom they employed
as models.
The Roman canon handed down in the treatise De Archi-
tecture of Vitruvius was taken up and developed in the early
days of the Renaissance by Leo Battista Alberti, himself, like
Vitruvius, an architect, and a curious enquirer into the secret
ways of nature and of the human frame. Forty years later
Leonardo da Vinci, in his Trattato dc/ia pittura, expressed the
general opinion that the proportions of the body should be