Bizarre 17th Century Drawings Mix Human and Animal Faces

Charles Le Brun was a French painter and art scholar who lived between 1619 and 1690

Inspired by the book "The Passions of the Soul", in which René Descartes analyzes human emotions, Le Brun created a series of drawings mixing men and animals.

This work was presented in 1671 as part of a lecture given by Le Brun in Paris

The theme of the lecture was the general expressions and those that show passions

The lines of his talk were lost, but the series of drawings survived the centuries.

Almost 350 years later, there are still 250 of these bizarre figures

They became publicly accessible in 1806 and are now exhibited at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

At the time, studies of facial expressions were on the rise as many people tried to analyze the character and personality of people through their faces.

The human face has many distinguished scholars throughout the century, and Le Brun's work marks a milestone in this regard.

Nowadays, studying physiognomy is not considered a real science, but it still finds enthusiasts around the world.

In World War II, for example, the Japanese army did physiognomic analysis to determine who would be the best pilots.

In this sense, it is very curious to imagine Le Brun's work distorting this reality, giving animalistic traces to the men portrayed in his sketches.

A lot of these portraits could become modern-day horror movie characters, don't you think?

But we can also imagine people who really resemble animals, in the sense of comparison, of course

Could we, besides physical comparison, make a parallel about the personality traits between the man-bug and the bug-bug?

What animal do you think it looks like? Both in physical and psychological appearance