Cesare Lombroso, an Italian criminologist who died in 1909, believed that criminality could be identified by physical characteristics. In keeping with his popular early eugenics theory, Giovanni Passannante's skull and brains were kept preserved and on display in a criminology museum in Rome until recently when activists sought to have his remains buried. Passannante was an anarchist who tried to assassinate King Umberto I of Savoy in 1878. Read the full story by Peter Kiefer from the weekend edition of The New York Times. Interested in the history of pseudosciences like eugenic and physiognomics? THE FACE OF EVIL examines this history of attempting to identify and categorize the physiognomy of evil through physical traits.

Labels: criminal justice, eugenics, Italy