LEFT FACING BUST

[mcwyler]

56 minutes ago, rasiel said:

Interesting theories but I think the actual reason is much more pedestrian in nature. Absent there being a specific directive (such as was more common in the post-Diocletian age) the fact is that most people are right handed so it's just easier to render portraits this way. If you close your eyes and 'draw' a portrait in profile chances are you will naturally start from left right, and from the top position downwards, if you're right handed; left otherwise.

If this is a bit ambiguous an even easier test: draw a horizontal line. Without cheating or overthinking it (and again assuming you're right handed): I bet you went from left to right, right? It's just easier to push outwards, taking up room as needed, than pulling in where you can box yourself in. It's also the reason why most scripts go from left to right (or in the case of traditional Chinese from top to bottom). It just follows the natural flow of a right-handed person who, more than likely, was the inventor of the script that then became convention.

The eagle-eyed will note that dies are engraved in a negative of the original so that right-facing portraits are engraved left-facing on the metal. While that's true enough the engraver still works off a baseline image rendered in the positive. This positive is then impressed into wax or clay which yielded the correct geometry to impart onto the die. Or more crudely, you make a sketch in charcoal and stencil it onto the virgin die face leaving behind the outline to carve out.

Rasiel

Interesting.But I think it may be more a cultural norm that is adopted by a given society. So people writing in Hebrew or Arabic or other scripts derived from Aramaic write right to left because they always did not because they're left-handed.

Bit of a simplistic way of expressing it but I expect you see what I mean.

[rasiel]

51 minutes ago, John Conduitt said:

That makes sense but doesn't it work the other way around? If you draw a face you start each stroke from the outside/front edge. You don't want to be pushing the pen into the face as it's harder to finesse. As these people say on the subject of drawing faces. Most right-handed people draw left-facing portraits.

Good point! 

[maridvnvm]

And since the dies were engraved in reverse.....