Il volto come “palinsesto alla rovescia” da Annibale Carracci a Sherlock Holmes

This paper analyses the possibility of an hermeneutical physiognomy that understands the human face as a ‘backwards palimpsest’, namely, a significant text, a profile that shows the guilty essence of human existence, already thematized in Kaf ka’s writings. In order to establish this new line of research, the author uses an interdisciplinary approach that keeps together several fields, such as criminal anthropology, psychoanalysis, semiotics, philosophy, art history, and detective stories.