Skip to main content

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove

  Despite both of us having science backgrounds, my wife and I share a leaning toward the artistic, though we may express it in different ways. In her life, my wife has been a painter, a poet, a singer, an actor, and a fiction writer. Not to mention a mother. I don’t remember what precipitated this event, but my wife, my son, and I were at home in the front room. My wife was responding to something my son said. She said, “remember, you get half your brains from me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a complete idiot.” To which my son started howling with laughter and said to me,” I think you have just been insulted.” Sometimes I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. I get no respect. But that is not an uncommon state of affairs for fatherhood. When my son was going to middle school and high school, my wife was always the one to go in with him to get him registered for classes. One time she was unable to go and I had to be the one to get him registered. “Ugh,” he said. “why can’t Mama do i...
1 comment
Read more

Empathy

  Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...
1 comment
Read more

A Deception

  I have a secret. I deceived my mother. Okay, it was like 50 years ago and she is gone now, but still . . .  I was generally a good boy. I did as I was told. My family lived a pretty strait-laced, middle-class, fairly conservative life. We were a G-rated family, well, until my older siblings broke the mold, but at this time, I was still in the mold. My friend Rich and I made a plan. Rich had asked me if I wanted to see Cabaret . He said he didn’t think much of Liza Minnelli, but he wouldn’t mind seeing her take her clothes off. We were like 13 years old and sex was ever-present on our minds as much as it was absent in our households. Cabaret was not rated R. It was rated PG. The ratings system has changed since that time. There was no PG-13; there was just the choice of G, PG, and R  (X was not an official rating).  Apparently the makers of Cabaret satisfied the ratings commission enough to escape an R rating, so it was PG.   There was therefore no law or ...
Post a Comment
Read more