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Drawing instrument

A physiognotrace is an instrument, designed to trace a person's physiognomy to make semi-automated portrait aquatints.

Invented in France in –, it was popular for some decades. The sitter climbed into a wooden frame (m high x m wide), sat and turned to the side to pose. A pantograph connected to a pencil produced within a few minutes a "grand trait", a contour line on a piece of paper.

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With the help of a second scaling-down pantograph, the basic features of the portrait were transferred from the sheet in the form of dotted lines to a copper plate, which had previously been prepared with a ground for etching.

One week later, the sitter received an etched plate and twelve little prints.^[1] The device but also the aquatint prints are called physionotraces.

History

In –, the Frenchman Gilles-Louis Chrétien invented the "physionotrace" to aid in the production of silhouette portraits, which became popular during the reign of Lou