Topic > History of Facial Reconstruction

During the Renaissance period, people became interested in the anatomy of the human body. It is known that artists such as Verrocchio, Michelangelo, Versalius used wax models to document their works. Towards the end of the 18th century, Lelli and his colleagues were pioneers in the development of scientific art and were the first sculptors to realize that the skeleton is the ideal structure on which to build the muscles and the body (Ballestriero, 2010). These artists can therefore be credited with developing the theory behind facial reconstruction. In the 19th century, work was done to obtain measurements of the depth of facial tissue from cadavers. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Facial reconstruction was previously achieved through the collaboration of scientists and artists. Anatomists depended on sculptors to represent their data, as can be seen in the cases of His and Sefner (1895), Kollmann and Buchly (1898) (Vermeulen, 2012). In 1895, the German anatomist His made the first scientific effort in this field and worked with the artist Sefner to reconstruct a plaster cast of Johann Sebastian Bach's skull using skin depth measurements at nine points in the midline of the face and six lateral points of twenty-four males. and four corpses of white women in Leipzig. He further authenticated the reconstruction by comparing it with available portraits of Bach. A few years later, Kollmann and Buchly also made a facial approximation of Dante in 1898 (Rynn et al., 2012; Snow et al., 1970) from tissue depth measurements taken at ten midline points and eight lateral points of 21 male and four female cadavers compared to His's total, thus producing average measurements for 45 male and eight female White European cadavers. The subjects ranged in age from 17 to 72 years and were all described as moderately well nourished (Snow et al, 1970). Kollman then reconstructed the face of a French Stone Age woman. Kollman measured the thickness of the flesh of hundreds of women from that area and produced technical drawings, which were then brought to life by Buchly (Vérze, 2009). Various anatomists and anthropologists have produced many further reconstructions of early hominoids such as Neanderthals and Pithecanthropes, and others of the Stone Age such as that of a well-preserved Neanderthal skull found in Chapelleoux Saint, France, in 1908; the head of an old male Neanderthal from Le Moustier cave, France. In 1913 the anthropologists Martin and Von Heggeling of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Jena produced several reconstructions of a Neanderthal face from the same skull (Tyrrell et al., 1997). Please note: this is just a sample. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a custom essayWith the advent of the 20th century, facial reconstructions began to be used in museums and various manual reconstruction techniques also began to spread. Furthermore, in 1989, the concept of computer-aided three-dimensional reconstruction for forensic identification was first proposed by P. Vanezis. The method used a low-power laser scanner and a video camera connected to a computer. The current trend is to move towards computer-assisted techniques considered less subjective and faster.