[290] A way to keep in mind the form of a face. If you wish to have facility in keeping in mind the air of a face, first learn by heart many heads, eyes, noses, mouths, chins, throats, necks, and shoulders. Let us take the case of noses: they are of ten kinds — straight, humped, hollow, with the prominence higher or lower than the middle, aquiline, even, snub, round, and pointed: these are good as regards the profile. Seen from the front, noses are of eleven kinds — equal, thick in the middle, thin in the middle, thick at the tip and thin at the root, thin at the tip and thick at the root, of wide nostrils and of narrow, of high and of low, of nostrils exposed and of nostrils hidden by the tip. And so you will find diversity in the other particulars, which things you ought to draw from nature and fix in your memory; or else, when you have to make a face from memory, carry with you a little notebook in which such features are noted, and when you have given a glance at the face of the person you wish to portray, you will then look aside for which nose or mouth resembles it, and make a small mark to recognize it, then at home put it together. Of monstrous faces I do not speak, because without effort they are kept in mind.

[291] Of the beauty of faces. Let one not make muscles with harsh definition, but let the soft lights end imperceptibly into pleasing and delightful shadows, and from this are born grace and beauty.

[292] Of physiognomy and chiromancy. Of fallacious physiognomy and chiromancy I shall not extend myself, because in them there is no truth; and this is made manifest because