Aquiline nose

In art

Portraiture

In ancient Roman imperial portraiture, a prominent hooked nose was a recurring element in depictions of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and the emperors of the first century AD, before emerging again in the third and early fourth centuries as a defining feature in portraits of Constantius Chlorus and his son, Constantine the Great; prominent noses could represent the vigour and authority of the emperor and his regime.

Literature

In some fictional works, especially that of post-Enlightenment Western writers, a Roman nose has been characterized as a marker of beauty and nobility. A well-known example of the aquiline nose as a marker contrasting the bearer with their contemporaries is the protagonist of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688). Although an African prince, he speaks French, has straightened hair, thin lips, and a "nose that was rising and Roman instead of African and flat". These features set him apart from most of his peers, and marked him instead as noble and on par with Europeans.

Racism

In the context of scientific racism, writers have attributed aquiline noses as a characteristic of different "races"; e.g. Jan Czekanowski claimed that it was characteristic of the Arabid race, Armenoid race, Mediterranean race, and Dinarid race. In 1899, William Z. Ripley claimed that it was characteristic of peoples of Teutonic descent. The supposed science of physiognomy, popular during the Victorian era, made the "prominent" nose a marker of Aryanness: "the shape of the nose and the cheeks indicated, like the forehead's angle, the subject's social status and level of intelligence. A Roman nose was superior to a snub nose in its suggestion of firmness and power, and heavy jaws revealed a latent sensuality and coarseness".

Among the ethnic groups of India, the aquiline nose type is most commonly associated with the Brahmin Kashmiris indigenous to the Kashmir Valley of Jammu and Kashmir in Northern India, as well as among the upper-caste Hindus of various regions in rest of India. The British ethnographer George Campbell, in his work, Ethnology of India, stated:

"The high nose, slightly aquiline, is a common type among Kashmiri Pandit. Raise a little the brow of a Greek statue and give the nose a small turn at the bony point in front of the bridge, so as to break the straightness of the line, you have the model type of this part of India, to be found both in living men and in the statues of the Peshawar Valley."

Notable examples

Cleopatra

In ancient portraiture, Cleopatra is typically depicted with a prominent aquiline nose. The French polymath Blaise Pascal believed that the queen's nose played a role in the way she had seduced both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, writing in his Pensées that "if it had been shorter, the whole face of the Earth would have changed".