The Mime of the Ancients investigated through Neapolitan
Gesture
by Andrea De Jorio
First published 1832
The volume has been reprinted three times photostatically in
Italian in recent years—1964, 1979, and 2002—and recently (2000) in a scholarly
and annotated English translation by Adam Kendon as Andrea de Jorio: Gesture in
Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity (Indiana University Press, 2000). An
Italian antiquarian, Andrea De Jorio was the first ethnographer of body
language. He recognised in the frescos of old, that the gestures depicted were
recognisable from those on the streets of modern Naples. De Jorio suggested a
continuity from Classical times, showing the similarity of hand gestures. He
produced the first scholarly investigation of Neapolitan hand gestures
comparing them with those in Roman and Greek art.