What Old Portraits are Hiding: The Original Photo Filters

Written By Becca Segovia

This portrait of Isabella de Medici (left) was on the verge of getting let go from the Carnegie Museum Collection because it was presumed to be a modern fake. The real/restored painting is shown here on the right.

This portrait of Isabella de Medici (left) was on the verge of getting let go from the Carnegie Museum Collection because it was presumed to be a modern fake. The curators agreed: the facial style simply didn’t match that of a renaissance master. 

It turns out that this painting was historically “airbrushed” - a rogue art restorer from the 1800s was having trouble selling it, so he decided to make it more appealing to an 1800s audience. He smoothed her face, made her nose, lips and hands more delicate, and went on his way. 

The Carnegie team discovered his handiwork with x-ray imagery, and restored the painting to its original version, revealing the true Isabella de Medici underneath (right.)

 

Today, we’re exploring a question that has followed me ever since I started doing facial reconstructions of past figures: What are old portraits hiding? Why do so many faces from the past look alike? Why do these French portraits all have huge eyes and soft chins? Why do Tudor-era portraits have all have pinched lips and high foreheads? And the most important question to me: Do these portraits look like the real person they were meant to depict? These old portraits are most definitely glossing over the truth - so let’s get the bottom of what they are hiding.

The full video of this blog post with visuals is available here.

 

There are a few questions you can ask yourself when viewing old portraits that can help decode their messages, and perhaps even what they are hiding:

  1. First, what symbols did the artist add to accurately convey the subject’s role?

    For instance, how can we tell the difference between a portrait of a lady in waiting vs a portrait of a Queen? The finery of their dress, the objects they hold in their hands, and the scale of the painting are all clues that the artist is giving us. They also couldn’t gloss over the appearance of someone so greatly that an audience wouldn’t know who they were supposed to be looking at. 

  2. Where was the portrait intended to hang and who was the audience?

    For instance, This portrait of Empress Sisi, which hung privately in her husband’s study, is very different in tone from this official portrait of her as Empress. Images meant for public consumption will always have a different energy. 

  3. What were the personal aspirations of the artist? 

    The famous Spanish painter Francisco Goya worked as the court painter for the Spanish royal family in the late 18th century, a really rocky time in Spain’s political history. Many modern historians view his unflattering portraits of the royal family as a satire on their incompetence. This is a good example of the artist maybe having clashing intentions with the people they are painting.

  4. And lastly, the thing that makes the most difference in the actual faces of these people: What did the sitter, and their culture, consider beautiful?

    Since I’m mostly focused on portraits of women for this video, this question is particularly relevant. While Kings got the luxury of being painted, for the most part, as they truly appeared, Queens and noblewomen didn’t quite get the same treatment. 

General Rules for all Portraiture

Recommended Reading:

The Royal Portrait: Image and Impact by Jennifer Scott

Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits by David Cannadine

There is an overarching commonality between all portraits in history, and that is that they are always a little retouched. 

It’s similar to professional headshots today - while the goal isn’t to alter any actual features, there are always hairs that are smoothed, blemishes that are removed, and wrinkles that are blurred just a little bit. And of course, the same as today, youth and beauty were still prized in portraits of women throughout every century.

We can illustrate this with comparisons from after the invention of photography. Below, on the left, is a portrait of Queen Victoria in 1859. Before photography, we would have all had to agree that this painting was the most accurate look at the Queen, and take it as face value. But on the right is a photograph from just a year later. 

Left: An official portrait of Queen Victoria from 1859. Right: A photograph taken just a year later.

Sure, she looks like herself - but better. This is what I mean when I say that portraits were the historical version of a photo filter. 

 

I thought a fun way to illustrate these concepts would be to place myself into portraits from 3 eras: The English Tudor Era, the late 1600s Early Modern period, and 1700s French Portraiture, and explore how the beauty standards of the time change my own face. 

First, let’s start with the Tudor era.

Tudor Era beauty was all about piety. The Tudors thought that inner beauty directly reflected to outer beauty, so their portraits almost retain the religious style from earlier centuries. You rarely see a Tudor woman in a painting making eye contact with the viewer. It’s all sidelong glances and chaste, pursed lips.

Every era I researched really desired one thing from its noblewomen: and that was a pale complexion, since it indicated not having to work in the sun. A nice ghostly complexion meant that a woman had nothing but her beauty to care about, unlike the common woman. 

 And the Tudors certainly took pale to an extreme. 

Their portraits are almost colorless, they really lack depth. Ideally, you’d have light hair and eyes to contribute to this effect even further. An open face with high, thin eyebrows and a high forehead was most desired. A trim waist and fashion that de-emphasized the breasts was in vogue - again, making sure you look as pious as possible.

So, I’ve inserted myself into a Tudor portrait, but I made sure to first, maintain all of my real facial features, not tweaking anything to Tudor standards. 

So, on the above picture (left), you can see this looks a little out of place, right? Even though the style matches the portrait, somehow my features look foreign. I’m a little too angular, maybe my nose and lips are a little larger than what the Tudors would like. 

So let’s say I’m a Tudor noblewoman who commissioned a portrait of myself - now I have to ask the artist to make a few corrections. I want smaller, more pious lips, with a stylized wavy shape. I want to be more symmetrical and smoothed out - smooth my brows, smooth the contours of my face, and maybe make my nose a little smaller. 

And the image on the right is what we end up with. Do I recognize it as myself? Sure, mostly. Does it look much more like other portraits of the time? It definitely does. 

This is how Tudors would change themselves. 

And then if I were really unlucky, my portrait would be copied by a less skilled painter and left to rot in someone’s attic for 300 years.

Do you see how easy it is to go from point A: I’m fully recognizable to Point B: It would be hard to imagine me in real life?

Now, let’s fast forward 100 years, to the late 1600s, the Early Modern, kind of “Queen Anne Era” of portraiture. 

We instantly see in portraits from this time that we’ve moved away from the religious undertones. We are now making some scandalous eye contact with the viewer. 

The ideal woman at this time was more rounded than centuries before - she was full-figured, her face was oval, she had a high brow, and a light double chin. Huge, round eyes were very attractive, particularly when they were brown or dark blue. There should be a full mouth with a rounded lower lip and a delicately curving upper lip. The cheeks and lips should be naturally flushed and healthy looking. 

So, here I am, I’m an English noblewoman in the court of Queen Anne who has commissioned a portrait. Once again, I’ve maintained all of my original features, but they don’t fit the beauty standard! I feel like I’m too angular for this time period. So what I would have my portrait artist do is make my jawline more rounded, and my neck and jaw a little thicker, because I look too skinny. 

My eyes look way too small, so let’s make them huge, and heavily lidded. Oh, and maybe give my nose that noble, curved appearance like Queen Anne’s. Perfect. 

This is the secret to how people in the late 1600s were modifying themselves for public consumption. Everything is more voluptuous, more rounded.

Now, let’s go to the French court in the 1700s, one of my personal favorite eras of portraiture. 

In every era, what was fashionable and beautiful was usually established by the Queen. Courtiers would race to copy the Queen’s hair, or the Queen’s new style of dress. There is no era that better exemplifies this phenomenon than late 1700s France.

If you were a European noblewoman wanting to look beautiful in a portrait, you wanted to make sure you looked just like Marie Antoinette. 

Vigee le Brun’s portraits of Marie Antoinette are iconic. Now in fashion were a slim, oval face with a rounded chin, large, almost drooping eyes, and small, sculpted noses. We’ve moved from flowing curls to fluffy, powdered wigs. Also in vogue is a deep flush on the cheeks and lips. 

The standards of this era were all about proportion and having symmetrical features. The goal was to not be too much of anything. Not too fat or too thin, not too tall or too short, etc. 

So I’ve placed myself faithfully into a French portrait. I do feel like I look more natural in this era than in the others so far, but I’d definitely still tell my painter to make a few tweaks. Definitely much larger eyes, and a smaller and more sculpted nose and mouth. I’ll make sure my eyebrows are smooth and symmetrical, and make my forehead smaller. 

These are the ways portraits from this era were airbrushed. 

One of my favorite things about portraits of Marie Antoinette, is that we actually can compare them to her real face: Her death mask, taken immediately after her execution. It reveals the truth hidden behind her regal image: that even she did not live up to the standard set by her portraiture. Her nose is not as chiseled, nor are her eyes as large. Her lips aren’t as stylized, and her face is more round than the soft oval she liked to show off in her portraits. 

Ultimately, we will never have a photograph of what our favorite figures from the past really looked like. But as I aim to re-create the faces of these figures on the channel, I know I can look through this lens: How people from the past tinkered with their own image.

Becca Segovia
Next

What did Pocahontas really look like?