Johann Caspar Lavater

Johann Caspar (or Kaspar) Lavater (Zurich, November 15, 1741 - January 2, 1801) was a writer, German-speaking Swiss Protestant philosopher and theologian.

Life

His father was a doctor, but he did not carry on the family tradition. In 1763, at just 22 years of age, he began a formative journey through northern Germany in the company of Johann Heinrich Füssli, where he met important personalities of the time, such as Moses Mendelssohn, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. It was in this period when he began to dedicate himself seriously to literature. Returning to Switzerland two years later, he founded several literary societies and became one of the most influential literary personalities of his day. His formation was nourished by the ideas of Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger, two important promoters of the Enlightenment.

Influence

He achieved notoriety mainly thanks to his work on physiognomy: The art of knowing men by physiognomy (1775-1778), of great influence on the men of the Sturm und Drang, on everything in regards to his ideas on the exaltation of genius, as a germinal figure of creation from freedom, feeling, energy and nature.

Goethe, whom he met in 1774 on a trip along the Rhine, would end up becoming his friend and admirer and put him in contact with Johann Gottfried Herder and Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. He can be considered the founder of physiognomy and morphopsychology.

Drawings and silhouettes

Lavater in a detailed design that emulates those he himself made, by Carlos Fuentes and Espinosa.

The silhouette of the bust in contrasting profile, a style very much in vogue in Europe since the mid-century XVIII, whose name It came from the last name of the royal and political economist, Étienne Silhouette (turned into the generic denomination "silhouette"), was spread by some cartoonists, especially by the abundant works of Lavater, given his vehement interest in the human physiognomy, which consolidated this form of drawing as a fashion object. He is credited with the design of a piece of furniture to carry out said illustration from the projected shadow of the model, as can be seen in engravings of the time. His posts frequently show multiple drawings of this type in various versions, some of him and his own family. In any case, Lavater used his own allusive drawings to illustrate his various writings. The style would undergo changes throughout the years to come and the geographies, especially at the hands of the French portrait painter, Auguste Edouart (1789–1861), being practically forgotten with the appearance of the daguerreotype.

Although in Paris a kind of silhouette is usually made from cut-outs of paper and cardboard, traditionally, it should not be confused with the style of Lavater, which in our days has been taken up by the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes and Espinosa Salido, not without some tweaks and adaptations of his invention (note the image on the right).

The famous Swiss illustrator, Warja Lavater (1913 - 2007), was a direct descendant of Johann Casper.