Photo-real portraits of Roman emperors

[Angela]

I'd say this is a pretty good "modernized" portrait of a bust of Julius Caesar, and the man would totally fit into today's Italy. In fact, he looks a lot like my mother's father and somewhat like my mother herself, i.e. a masculine version.

Of course, whether the bust really is a good representation of Caesar, we don't know, but it was certainly modeled on someone of the period.

The creator has a facebook page where she does this for a lot of ancient people. Most of them look pretty good to me, except perhaps Nefertiti, who wouldn't have been as "African" looking from what we know of ancient Egyptian genetics, and unless the coins of her are inaccurate, Cleopatra really wasn't that pretty.

Indeed, Agrippina and Lady Jane Grey are the only really pretty women, but make up and modern hair do wonders. It seems she made a really silly mistake with the latter. She clearly should have blue eyes.

https://www.facebook.com/RoyaltyNow/photos

Wow, I look even more like a female version of him in this reconstruction.

Anyway, here is a coin issued by Caesar himself while he was in Gaul. The laurel leaf hides the fact that he was balding. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

 

[Jovialis]

I'd say this is a pretty good "modernized" portrait of a bust of Julius Caesar, and the man would totally fit into today's Italy. In fact, he looks a lot like my mother's father and somewhat like my mother herself, i.e. a masculine version.

Of course, whether the bust really is a good representation of Caesar, we don't know, but it was certainly modeled on someone of the period.

The creator has a facebook page where she does this for a lot of ancient people. Most of them look pretty good to me, except perhaps Nefertiti, who wouldn't have been as "African" looking from what we know of ancient Egyptian genetics, and unless the coins of her are inaccurate, Cleopatra really wasn't that pretty.

Indeed, Agrippina and Lady Jane Grey are the only really pretty women, but make up and modern hair do wonders. It seems she made a really silly mistake with the latter. She clearly should have blue eyes.

https://www.facebook.com/RoyaltyNow/photos

Absolutely, I agree.

 

[Angela]

Absolutely, I agree.

I added my children's favorite picture of me for comparison; I'm about 30 there.

The reconstruction looks more like he could be my brother than my brother does. He's a totally different type.

 

[Carlos]

That image of Julius Caesar above is very idyllic. Angela I'm sorry, but I don't see the resemblance hahahahaha

 

[Angela]

That image of Julius Caesar above is very idyllic. Angela I'm sorry, but I don't see the resemblance hahahahaha

I'm not so fond of that one, although the only thing "wrong" in my opinion is that the eyes are too close together. It's more the expression in the eyes, or lack of expression, that I find wanting.

This is still my favorite.

It's as if he's about to speak.

 

[Carlos]

Julius Caesar was the great protagonist of the last period of Republican Rome. He was a majestic orator, strategist, writer and poet, he stood out mainly as a politician and military badge, he had a personality, impulsive, ambitious but also generous and subtle.

 

[Vitruvius]

Using the neural-net tool Artbreeder, Photoshop and historical references, Daniel Voshart have created photoreal portraits of Roman Emperors. For this project, I have transformed, or restored (cracks, noses, ears etc.) 800 images of busts to make the 54 emperors of The Principate (27 BC to 285 AD). He posted about it on Medium and explained in detail how he recreated the face of each emperor one by one. The realism is absolutely amazing!

In my opinion this is really poorly done.

An enormous amount of the emperors of European background (Italian or otherwise) have particularly odd dark skin tones which simply do not look natural whatsoever in this depiction. Commodus and Marcus Aurelius almost look half black and Hadrian is bordering on looking like some type of arab. The Severan dynasty, which was of mixed Mena/Italic stock looks Indian/Pakistani more than anything mixed between Levantine/punic and European. Phillip the Arab somehow looks lighter than Marcus Aurelius/Commodus both of whom had entirely Italian ancestry. This really tells me a lot about the author's personal bias who cannot seem to seperate the phentoype of curly/volumnous hair from dark skin and black eyes. Interestingly he drastically modified Lucius Verus' real hair texture to lay more flat despite relevent statues showing it being little different from Marcus Aurelius' hair texture. He also chose to make Lucius Verus blonde based off source material written hundreds of years after his death which probably explains why he thought any of this was apporpriate. Augustus by contrast looks far too pale and blonde - not because blonde features can't be found in Italians but because we have pigment restorations on statues that were kept in his personal residence during his wife's life, and we know for this reason he had deep brown hair which was almost dark in pigment. His eye color is also wrong and is verified by the same metholdolgy to be medium brown. The only thing that looks correct with him is the pale skin.

Overall I think Danial Voshart has a very poor understanding of Mediterranean phenotypes. He seems to apply simplistic stereotypes derived from africans and nordic populations to try to pigment and even modify the appearance of the emperors as some sort of cross between these two extremes and I find the practice rather revulsive and distasteful.

 

[Vallicanus]

In my opinion this is really poorly done.

An enormous amount of the emperors of European background (Italian or otherwise) have particularly odd dark skin tones which simply do not look natural whatsoever in this depiction. Commodus and Marcus Aurelius almost look half black and Hadrian is bordering on looking like some type of arab. The Severan dynasty, which was of mixed Mena/Italic stock looks Indian/Pakistani more than anything mixed between Levantine/punic and European. Phillip the Arab somehow looks lighter than Marcus Aurelius/Commodus both of whom had entirely Italian ancestry. This really tells me a lot about the author's personal bias who cannot seem to seperate the phentoype of curly/volumnous hair from dark skin and black eyes. Interestingly he drastically modified Lucius Verus' real hair texture to lay more flat despite relevent statues showing it being little different from Marcus Aurelius' hair texture. He also chose to make Lucius Verus blonde based off source material written hundreds of years after his death which probably explains why he thought any of this was apporpriate. Augustus by contrast looks far too pale and blonde - not because blonde features can't be found in Italians but because we have pigment restorations on statues that were kept in his personal residence during his life, and we know for this reason he had deep brown hair which was almost dark in pigment. His eye color is also wrong and is verified by the same metholdolgy to be medium brown. The only thing that looks correct with him is the pale skin.

Overall I think Danial Voshart has a very poor understanding of Mediterranean phenotypes. He seems to apply simplistic stereotypes derived from africans and nordic populations to try to pigment and even modify the appearance of the emperors as some sort of cross between these two extremes and I find the practice rather revulsive and distasteful.

Suetonius described Augustus as being "subflavus", not quite blonde, so perhaps some hair shade of auburn or medium brown, and with a skin complexion between fair and swarthy.

His eyes were described as "bright" with no mention of an actual colour.

 

[Vallicanus]

The last representation of Julius Caesar in post 186 above is ridiculous with its unnaturally swollen head.

 

[Vitruvius]

Suetonius described Augustus as being "subflavus", not quite blonde, so perhaps some hair shade of auburn or medium brown, and with a skin complexion between fair and swarthy.

His eyes were described as "bright" with no mention of an actual colour.

Subflavum (less than blonde) in this case would simply mean brown. I've actually had this debate with individuals who are dead set convinced that Augustus was a blonde haired and blue eyed "nord" or "nordic type" supposedly representative of some sort of Northern European epoch of the Roman empire. Individuals like this are of course, gravely misfounded and while I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of Augustus or some of the other emperors having such features if true, the evidence does not point us to this at all for the case of Augustus.

The example I'm drawing from is the Augustus of Prima Porta which was commissioned either by Tiberius in 20BC or by Augustus' wife, Livia. Both would've been very close to him throughout his life and we know for a fact that the statue was recovered from Livia's residence, meaning the chances of the colors found on it being wrong/incorrect are slim to none. A friend of mine even went as far as to email Paolo Liberani who was in charge of the restoration to confirm that the eye and hair color were not creative/inventive choices, but instead specific to the paint which was left on the original. Simply put he had brown eyes and brown hair, which is of course was very common for Italians both then and now.

 

[Vitruvius]

The last representation of Julius Caesar in post 186 above is ridiculous with its unnaturally swollen head.

Yes, the last one is ridiculous and doesn't even look quite human. The audacity of some to posit some of these as serious portrayals is a good joke.

 

[Pax Augusta]

Even facial reconstructions of museums and universities are still too subjective, reflecting more the opinion of the person doing them than objective data, so let alone the reconstructions that have been spreading at the amateur level, also thanks to AI, for the past few years.

 

[Vitruvius]

Even facial reconstructions of museums and universities are still too subjective, reflecting more the opinion of the person doing them than objective data, so let alone the reconstructions that have been spreading at the amateur level, also thanks to AI, for the past few years.

This is why I prefer to look to the actual busts and statues that were built during or very close to the lifetimes of these emperors. That's the closest you will ever get to the truth of the matter. The color restoration route is just an added bonus thanks to the now widespread use of radiospectroscopy.

 

[Pax Augusta]

This is why I prefer to look to the actual busts and statues that were built during or very close to the lifetimes of these emperors. That's the closest you will ever get to the truth of the matter. The color restoration route is just an added bonus thanks to the now widespread use of radiospectroscopy.

Yes, of course, but considering that busts reflect the artistic trends of the time in which they are made, and that realism in ancient portraiture is not present until the late 4th century B.C. And even a realistic bust can always be influenced by the subjectivity of the artist.

 

[Vitruvius]

Yes, of course, but considering that busts reflect the artistic trends of the time in which they are made, and that realism in ancient portraiture is not present until the late 4th century B.C. And even a realistic bust can always be influenced by the subjectivity of the artist.

Agreed, but to add to your point most Roman busts which we have recovered (that I've seen at least) were completed long after the 4th century BC. If I had to guess I would assume the correlation of frequency is with the peak of Rome's wealth, so the majority seem to come from 1st century BC to 2nd century AD.