Artist Lets Us Get A Glimpse Of What These 28 Famous Historical And Popular Figures ‘Really’ Looked Like (New Pics)
Interview With ArtistWe all know what famous personalities of the modern day look like, but it's a whole different topic when it comes to history. Most of them were portrayed by artists who were influenced by the trends and technologies of their day, and their own unique style was a factor too. It's not rare that one single person looked completely differently depending on the artist. So naturally, we come to wonder what they really looked like. And the current technology powered by computers and artificial intelligence offers an answer to that interest. And sometimes the answer looks so real it's even creepy. It's as if these historical personalities are our own contemporaries.
The Netherlands artist Bas Uterwijk, known as Ganbrood on Instagram, satisfies our curiosity yet again by showing some new and updated versions of historical and fictional personalities.
More info: Instagram | basuterwijk.com | twitter.com
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Nefertiti
This is completely inaccurate. Ancient Egyptians were not sub-Saharan (black) africans. They were Mediterranean/European/Middle Eastern people. In other words, they looked white. Historians have always known this and it has now been scientifically confirmed with DNA. https://news.sky.com/story/egyptian-mummies-have-european-and-turkish-dna-scientists-10898867
Sorry but people are not JUST black or white. And ancient Egypt was especially poised as a place for lots of racial mixing. Just because some mummies have some confirmed European dna does not mean they were white.
Load More Replies...Based on what ? This really doesn't look like representation we have of her.
based on making her look like she was born in the 1990s
Load More Replies...Nefertiti still looks gorgeous. No propaganda and artist renditions to stroke this Queens ego. She is simply sublime.
this is how these people would look now. Our ancestors even 100 years ago looked different than we do now
They can extrapolate based on population movements, artistic representation, and origins. Egypt, thanks to predictable flooding, was pretty stable for a long time.
Load More Replies...It isn't the first time that Bas' neural network reconstructions have been featured here on Bored Panda. His first post went viral, and the recreations in the second post were no less impressive than in the first one. We highly recommend checking them out, as even in today's post there are updated versions of the images that were in the older posts, and it's very interesting to see the evolution of how they were refined to what they are as of now.
Cleopatra
Another powerful woman who pissed off the lovers who couldn't control her
The cosmetics she used would not have looked at all like they were applied at Merle Norman in the mall in the 80s. What a distracting and unnecessary detail.
Notice the misogynist Western world buried all her brilliance under the now all too familiar myth of female seductress. Time to right that wrong.
There's not nearly enough primary evidence (other than coinage) to even make a stab at what Cleopatra looked like.
Greek biographer Plutarch, writing about a century after Cleopatra’s death, presented a less flattering picture: "For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her.” Plutarch, however, was quick to note Cleopatra’s ;irresistible charm,' sweet voice, persuasiveness, and stimulating presence." -Brittanica
Load More Replies...Aphrodite (New Version)
Maybe better for you to avoid an awkward conversation as to why you're in her baths... lol
Load More Replies...A bit of a joke to make a picture of a mythical figure and claim realism!
Aphrodite is a mythical character. How could computers interpolate her facial features without any proof.
The ancient Greeks described her as having golden hair, like her father Zeus. Yes, the ancient Greeks had blonde gods!
Load More Replies...I love how androgynous she looks - as the goddess of love, it's not surprising.
i have a hard time calling a greek myth a historical figure. also, i figured it was clear that she changed her appearance to accommodate the looker's opinion of beauty?
Her eyes.. they remind me of my eyes. Maybe I'm just seeing things, I'm looking myself in a mirror and looking at her eyes and I'm like ??? but I don't really have any good pictures from straight forward to make a more accurate comparison.
Bas has been kind enough to share with us about his life and his passion in two separate interviews: "Although my career path has swayed in different directions, my focus has always been on playing with realism and illusion. Special effects, 3D animation, and video games all try to make fantasies plausible. Influenced by European comics, movies, and video games, I have experimented with most forms of visual storytelling."
Akhenaten
Yes, but he looks nothing like the sculptures of Akhenaten that are still around.
Load More Replies...You know, he was erased from Egyptian history for believing that there is only one God, Raah, the sun god. The other Egyptians did not like it. The 'aten' at the end of his name basically says that he only believes in one God. Tutankhamun, his son, changed the ending of his name back to 'amun' so he would not get disrespected. I watch a lot of ancient Egyptian documentaries
Not Raah, but Aten, His is known for a new religion he created that centered on the Aten.
Load More Replies...This is completely inaccurate. Ancient Egyptians were not sub-Saharan (black) africans. They were Mediterranean/European/Middle Eastern people. In other words, they looked white. Historians have always known this and it has now been scientifically confirmed with DNA. https://news.sky.com/story/egyptian-mummies-have-european-and-turkish-dna-scientists-10898867
David By Michelangelo (New Version)
He is, except one _small_ detail (not shown in this picture).
Load More Replies...it's David By Michelangelo not David and Goliath
Load More Replies...Does anyone else see the beginnings of a double chin It seems off somehow to me
"Working with classical art versus photography in neural networks for me feels like the next step in depicting ourselves. Just as photography changed the shape of classical painting, techniques based on artificial intelligence will start influencing and inspiring art and (post-)photography. AI applications are developing at an incredible speed and it will influence almost all segments of our society. I wouldn't be surprised if, in five or ten years, it will be possible to create moving, interactive three-dimensional characters with these techniques: super-realistic avatars that people are able to communicate within virtual surroundings."
Tutankhamun
I learned recently he was the product of incest so he had a lot of deformities
Incest was very common in egyptian royalty, to keep the "purity of the divine bloodline" intact - which indeed led to some deformities over generations. Some scientist believe Tutankamun might have been the son of king Echnaton with one of his biological daughters. The image might be massively too benevolent. In this case, the scientists x-raying the mummy found him to have a cleft palate, protruding buck teeth, female hips and even a club foot. He also suffered from bone degeneration and late effects of malaria.
Load More Replies...This must be based on the burial mask. Imaging of his remains showed a misshapen cranium, an underslung jaw, weak chin, and overbite. Kid was a royal mess.
I read several times that because of inbreeding, he was not a handsome man, so this one disappoints me.
It was recently discovered between genetic testing and the digital recreation of the Younger Lady (female mummy found in Akhenaten's tomb) that not only had Nefertiti's body finally been found, but that she was, in fact, Tut's mother 😯 Genetics showed that Tut was the product of a marriage between first cousins - Nefertiti and Akhenaten
Considering dudes medium chart, I'm sure by how good looking this rendition is
Sure... My God, can nobody read here? I just said that incest doesn't automatically means the “product“ is deformed. Nothing more. How do you get that I am defending incest from that? What are you all interpreting into that sentence?
Load More Replies...That's a lot of racist spamming, madam. It's accurate. Your racist bias isn't. They were not white
Load More Replies...Elizabeth I (New Version)
Why? For not having a tiny nose? In lots of countries it's very common. Beauties aren't only the classical hollywood ones. Specially in other parts of the world.
Load More Replies...I love these. I feel like the paintings leave so much to what the artist was told to portray. As in trends or what the people of the time saw as 'beauty '.
Yes but these are based on those portraits... from all accounts Beth wasn't an attractive lady... make up for white skin usually had terrible poisons and raw chemicals in them, sugar had become very popular and a sign of wealth so they were having sugar parties and so on that damaged teeth... plus I think she may have had a separate skin condition like small pox marks or something similar....this picture is very kind to Liz I....
Load More Replies...I love the hair and the lips but in reality, she would've had more pox scars. Very cool, though!
"After working more than a decade in 3D animation, I was getting frustrated with the artificiality of it, so photography, for me, was a way to expand my horizons and investigation of what reality looks like: getting to know light and the way it behaves on materials, human faces, and how we perceive expressions in their smallest details."
Jesus Christ Based On Leonardo Da Vinci's "Savior Of The World"
At least it's not the Northern European Jesus that we're all used to see 🤪
As Da Vinci was born in 1452, 14 centuries too late for them to have met, his idea of Jesus is not likely to be any closer than ours another 5 centuries later!
To those who downvoted: I wrote intentionally "into MY heart". How can you say NO WAY to that? 😂 Ridiculous!
Load More Replies...He wouldn't have straight brown hair, he's from middle eastern area, this still isn't accurate, he still looks too white.
Christy...he was an Israeli Aramaic/Hebrew speaking semitic/jew. They usually, even today, have dark curly hair and a dark complexion closer to the Mediterranean peoples. On the shroud of Turin his hair is long, wavy and more than shoulder length.
Load More Replies...Dude should have a fro, tho. Or at the very least, very curly hair. It was described as having the likeness to wool.
Apollo
Ok, I give up, this is a worthless waste of time. Anyone can imagine what a mythical figure resembled.
It's fun to see what other people think though!
Load More Replies..."These 'Deep Learning' networks are trained with thousands of photographs of human faces and are able to create near-photorealistic people from scratch or fit uploaded faces in a 'Latent Space' of a total of everything the model has learned. I think the human face hasn't changed dramatically over thousands of years and apart from hairstyles and makeup, people that lived long ago probably looked very much like us, but we are used to seeing them in the often distorted styles of ancient art forms that existed long before the invention of photography."
Fayum Mummy Portrait (New Version)
William Shakespeare's Juliet Capulet
In which case it is 100% accurate to the artist's vision of her. ;-)
Load More Replies...Why are you portraying a 13 year old girl as an adult? Shakespeare's Juliet was THIRTEEN YEARS OLD! (Yes, Romeo and Juliet was about two angsty teens, not the grand romance you think it is.)
She's just shy of her 13th birthday in the play, so probably would not look this old
But Bas isn't a one-trick pony: "Next to the historical recreations, I really love to work on completely made-up faces. For my audience, it sometimes is hard to see what they are looking at. Especially for people who are not familiar with the technical aspects of my work. That way, they don't know how much is made up. It could be a photograph of someone they have never seen before. I aim to make these faces interesting enough so they captivate and intrigue the viewer, like in any good classical portrait."
Mary Shelley
Lilith
I mean, I'd put better than 90% of the people in the Bible as being fictional, with the remaining being highly suspect at best.
Load More Replies...Queen Tia
Indeed, as many of my African Ancestors were.
Load More Replies...out of all the rest, I think this one is the most accurate. (according to queen tiye's bust)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Taking his lifestyle into account, he probably looked a lot older than 35 when he died. Contemporary sources, in spite of his undoubted genius and archievements, paint him as a heavy drinker and gambler with a knack for not getting enough sleep.
Load More Replies...Mona Lisa
The original painting had eyebrows but years of cleaning have wiped them off.
She got some exfoliation, but that is basically the painting right there.
Also don't forget this may be a fake. The painting has controversy
The smile is in the eyes, which is far more captivating to me than the original painting.
And there's a warmth here that was lacking in the original too.
Load More Replies...Idia
According to wiki: Idia was the mother of Esigie, the Oba of Benin who ruled from 1504 to 1550. She played a very significant role in the rise and reign of her son, being described as a great warrior who fought relentlessly before and during her son's reign as the oba (king) of the Edo people
Load More Replies...thats because all of these are made to look like modern day people
Load More Replies...Fayum Mummy Portrait (New Version)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
He looks much older here than he ever got (he died at 37). Maybe Mozart the elder?
He led a partying lifestyle for a while. That can age a person. Alternatively, I have a photo of my grandmother in her thirties. I'm currently in my '50s and still look younger than she did at the time of that photo. Then there was the guy 2 years behind me in school who bought his first car (a '70s Baracuda) buying beer for everyone, he looked 40-slight wrinkles and balding at 16.. Some people just look old at a young age
Load More Replies...Have you ever looked at an old yearbook? People looked old at a young age compared to now.
Load More Replies...Judith Jans Leyster
There are a number of other female painters you might want to look up: Sofonisba Anguissola and Artemisia Gentileschi. The former has lovely intimate paintings and drawings that catch wonderful expressions of people in everyday situations; the latter is a Baroque artist with some dramatic works (one veers into slasher movie territory).
Load More Replies...That's, mean. I think your just jealous of her naturally red (slightly orangeish) lips.
Load More Replies...Anne Lister
I love when they make them smiling :) For some reason it makes them feel more real
Sofonisba Anguissola
Doomguy (New Version)
Someone compared muscly men in skinny jeans to Gru from Minions and now I cannot unsee it 😂
Load More Replies...Fayum Mummy Portrait (New Version)
Isabella Brant (New Version)
some of these are beginning to look repetitive, especially around the eyes
Farmer From Laren By Martinus Van Regteren Altena
Sandro Botticelli's Portrait Of A Young Man Holding A Roundel
Not Sandro! Please! Leave Sandro alone . . . . . he can stand on his own two feet.
I'm getting a strong Lancel Lannister (Game of Thrones) vibe from this picture...
Vincenzo Catena's Portrait Of A Young Man
This is just a list of tweaks made to fit modern standards of beauty: smooth skin, sharp chin, well-shaped lips, etc.
Many of the Egyptian ones are completely inaccurate. Ancient Egyptians were not sub-Saharan (black) africans. They were Mediterranean/European/Middle Eastern people. In other words, they looked white. Historians have always known this and it has now been scientifically confirmed with DNA. https://news.sky.com/story/egyptian-mummies-have-european-and-turkish-dna-scientists-10898867
Yes, but nowadays if you dare to say it you're finished.
Load More Replies...This is just the artists perception, so the title saying its "what they really looked like" is somewhat misleading
Wait, did they just remove the Paloma Picasso portrait because it proves that all of these portraits are horseshit? (Seeing as Paloma Picasso is still alive and the portrait they made of her looked nothing like her?)
This is ridiculous. Most of the portrait are about fictional or mythological characters. And the real historical ones are questionable at best.
This is just a list of tweaks made to fit modern standards of beauty: smooth skin, sharp chin, well-shaped lips, etc.
Many of the Egyptian ones are completely inaccurate. Ancient Egyptians were not sub-Saharan (black) africans. They were Mediterranean/European/Middle Eastern people. In other words, they looked white. Historians have always known this and it has now been scientifically confirmed with DNA. https://news.sky.com/story/egyptian-mummies-have-european-and-turkish-dna-scientists-10898867
Yes, but nowadays if you dare to say it you're finished.
Load More Replies...This is just the artists perception, so the title saying its "what they really looked like" is somewhat misleading
Wait, did they just remove the Paloma Picasso portrait because it proves that all of these portraits are horseshit? (Seeing as Paloma Picasso is still alive and the portrait they made of her looked nothing like her?)
This is ridiculous. Most of the portrait are about fictional or mythological characters. And the real historical ones are questionable at best.
