Spurzheim's Phrenological Head
J. G. Spurzheim, c. 1825
No print size passed the check for this piece: at 8 x 10 in, Wrong shape: a 15% crop. We would rather show it than sell a soft print.
See pieces like it you can buyA skull mapped into numbered regions, each assigned a mental 'organ' — the scheme Johann Spurzheim carried across Europe and America, refining the cranioscopy of his teacher Franz Joseph Gall into the movement that became phrenology. Spurzheim's diagrams, drawn in the early nineteenth century, gave the pseudoscience its enduring look: the head as a numbered territory of faculties. The theory has long since been discarded, and rightly. But the images endure, and this is one of the clearest — a document of how earnestly a false system can be built, catalogued here as history, never as fact.
- Maker
- J. G. Spurzheim
- Date
- c. 1825
- Medium of the original
- Plate
- Original held by
- Wellcome Collection, London
- Credit
- Wellcome Collection, London
- Rights
- Public domain, verified
- Catalogue number
- PA-00471
Before a size goes on sale, the file is measured against it: pixels per inch at that size, how much of the picture a crop would lose, tone and sharpness. A size that fails is not offered, so there is nothing to choose wrong.
| Size | Why |
|---|---|
| 8 x 10 in | Wrong shape: a 15% crop |
| 8 x 12 in | 103 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 11 x 14 in | Wrong shape: a 14% crop |
| 12 x 16 in | 70 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 12 x 18 in | 69 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 16 x 20 in | Wrong shape: a 15% crop |
| 16 x 24 in | 51 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 18 x 24 in | 46 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 20 x 30 in | 41 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 24 x 30 in | Wrong shape: a 15% crop |
| 24 x 36 in | 34 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 30 x 40 in | 28 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 36 x 48 in | 23 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 40 x 60 in | 20 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
- Scanned
- 2026-10-07
- Master file
- 844 x 1,242 px, srgb
- Tone
- Darks 1, lights 197 of 255; 0% clipped light, 0.5% clipped dark
- Colour
- 0% vivid
- Sharpness
- 8.77
- Notes
- Neutrals lean warm (yellow): the paper and varnish of the original, kept as scanned
The Hermetica
The esoteric tradition’s emblems, astrological figures and the old charts of palmistry and phrenology.
All 58 pieces from The Hermetica
