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Elusive Images

 


It is difficult to know what people really looked like before photography was invented. All we have are verbal accounts and portraits from artists. Verbal accounts are unreliable and subject to interpretation. I have seen movies made from books and found inevitably that the actor or actress playing a given character looks nothing like I pictured in my head from reading the book, even if the actor fit the general description.

Artist depictions are also suspect. Even the best artist rendering can be deceiving (we well know that even photographs can mislead). The artist may have had a motive to make the subject look as good as they could, maybe even better than reality. Consider the portrait of Anne of Cleves. King Henry VIII was looking for a wife after the death of his third wife, Jane Seymore. Anne of Cleves was suggested to him as a suitable candidate (from a good protestant family). But he had never seen her. Henry sent the artist Hans Holbein off to paint a portrait of Anne and her sister Amalia as each were possible candidates. Henry picked Anne. By all accounts he was disappointed when he saw her in person. He felt Holbein exaggerated her looks. Some even say that Henry was so disappointed in her looks that he would not go to bed with her. Whether that is true or not, the marriage only lasted six months and was annulled on grounds of nonconsummation.

Henry himself had several portraits made during his life. But if you saw Henry VII walking down the street, would you recognize him? Probably not. Court painters certainly flattered their subjects, and most portraits of Henry were after he was older and fatter.

Most famous historical figures only had portraits painted of them after they were famous, meaning they were painted late in life. Is that an accurate representation? And of course, it is only the most famous (or most rich) which were painted.  Moderately important people never had their picture painted. Even some very important ones: Do we really know what Shakespeare looked like? There are only three representations of Shakespeare: The Chandos portrait (the roguish one with the earring), the Droeshout engraving (the most famous), and the bust overlooking his grave. All three are somewhat suspect. The Chandos portrait is the least likely to be an actual likeness of the Bard. The bust over his grave shows a puffy, bloated Shakespeare and was probably taken from a death mask, (not a very good way to gauge what someone looks like in life). The Droeshout engraving has the best provenance, but Mr. Droeshout was 15 when Shakespeare died. It was commissioned to adorn the cover of the First Folio, a memorial compilation of his plays seven years after his death, so it was not drawn from life but perhaps from an earlier (now lost) portrait. Again, Mr. Shakespeare could be walking down the street today and nobody would recognize him. For that matter, there are no authentic pictures of Jesus, Mohammed, or Buddha. We have no idea what they looked like.

What images we have of the pre-photography era certainly underrepresents certain people. The underrepresented would include indigenous peoples, minorities, and women. If you really want to know what a historical figure looked like, you had better get busy and invent that time machine. Without that, we are clueless.

Star Liner

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