Physiognomy

{!!} A person's character is often revealed less by what he says than by the subtleties he unknowingly exudes. There is almost nothing that a person does that doesn't in some way betray him - his gait, his gaze, the inflections of his voice, his posture, laugh, every mannerism, the clothes he wears, a sigh, a grunt, a belch - everything is telling, everything pronounces something.

A person's physical traits too have a voice of their own. There is much that speaks of a man by the symmetry of his ears or eyes, or by the shape & contours of his skull. Even his rump is a novel of its own, and I can usually learn more about someone by what I see in him than by what is spoken of him or by what he propounds.

"The tongue expresses only the thoughts of one man, but the face expresses a thought of nature herself." - Schopenhauer

I think Velazquez was following my same train of thought when he decided to depict the hump in the smock in the painting above. Not only does his face "discover" him, but also his pregnant posture, his hands, and particularly his outspread legs. If you cdn't slide a sofa-bed through them without him knowing, you couldn't slide anything through, and for this I do not believe I wd've liked him. I can only imagine what self-indulgent atrocities this charlatan committed during his lifetime. I can only imagine what rings of hell his monstrous prancing feet led his people through.