The Face

The Face, one of a series on the Five Senses held in the Augustiner Museum, Freiburg, and dated around 1700, represents an allegorical subject that required particular ingenuity since 'face' (or sight) was usually represented through mirrors, optical instruments, and gazing figures rather than a single anatomical feature. In the Five Senses tradition, Sight was typically the noblest sense — associated with painting, astronomy, and philosophical contemplation — and its visual vocabulary included telescopes, globes, paintings, and mirrors. Francken's version on copper continues the luxury-object quality appropriate to a series assembled for discerning private collectors. The Augustiner Museum, founded in a converted Augustinian monastery in Freiburg, holds works from the region and from broader European collections that entered through bequest and acquisition.

Copper support maintains the series' consistent precious-object quality, with Francken's handling of the reflective surfaces — mirrors, lenses, polished metal — doubly appropriate given copper's own reflectivity. The smooth ground enables the finest details of optical instruments to be rendered without brush texture interrupting the depicted precision.