Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting
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Charles Bell wrote the first treatise on notions of anatomy and physiology of facial expression for painters and illustrators, titled Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting (1806).
- "It is not with the agonies of a man, writhing in the pangs of death, that we sympathise, on beholding the celebrated group of Laocoon and his sons ; for such sympathies can only be painful and disgusting : but it is with the energy and fortitude of mind which those agonies call into action and display. For though every feature and every muscle is convulsed, and every nerve contracted, yet the breast is expanded and the throat compressed, to shew that he suffers in silence. I therefore still maintain in spite of the blind and indiscriminate admiration, which pedantry always shews for everything which leaves the stamp of high authority, that Virgil has debased the character, and robbed it of all its sublimity and grandeur of expression, by making Laocoon roar like a bull."']
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