I want to share an exciting project I’ve been working on in the past year! As part of the project "Mesopotamia Sculptures in Colour", Astrid Nunn and Heinrich Piening had the opportunity to analyze the famous female head from Assur. I was given the opportunity to step in and reconstruct the 4000-year-old head, to make it more lifelike.

Ugliest wife, or luckiest wife?

Anne of Cleves is known to history as being the “ugly” fourth wife of King Henry VIII, but we have reasons to believe this is mostly a case of historical slander.

Anne grew up in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of what is now Germany. She was the daughter of a powerful Protestant ruler, John III. When King Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, died in childbirth, he was soon on the hunt for wife #4. After the split from the Catholic church in England, it was imperative to find a Protestant ally in Europe.

"If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong” - Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln is one of the most celebrated men in American history, famous for ending slavery in the United States. He was born very poor, and faced struggle after struggle in his young life, including being abandoned for six months by his father. He also lost 3 out of 4 children, and a former fiance. His life was incredibly difficult, yet nearly everyone who met him said he had a gentle, compassionate manner. He was also very funny. The man as he is described by his contemporaries looks very different from the photographs showing a tired, grim man. I’ve worked on some re-creations and restorations to really bring Lincoln back to life.

Elizabeth I is someone I could revisit over and over. I wanted to create a version of her in her own time, based on this 1560s portrait of her as a young woman. Check out the full video about her life and reign on YouTube - Royalty Now Studios.

Here’s what we know about her appearance: We know from her life that in order to establish power as an unmarried female monarch, Elizabeth could not let one crack of her personal vulnerability show. Her portraits are much the same. They show Elizabeth in great wealth and splendor, showing her as youthful and trim even in her old age. Her image was to reflect the evergreen power that England was.

This statue image is said to be about as close as we can get to Alexander's true appearance. 

Its original was sculpted by Lysippos, the court sculptor of Alexander & his family, during Alexander's lifetime. The original would have been bronze, but this is a Roman-era stone copy. It's definitely safe to assume there is some stylization going on with images of Alexander, considering his huge reputation and penchant for depicting himself as god-like. But with this one, something just feels very real and natural. 

Shakespeare is a subject I’ve really been looking forward to. But I’ve always been thrown off by the lack of portraiture for this great man. We don’t have a single verified description or portrait of William Shakespeare from life - we pretty much only know what we know about him thanks to his friends gathering and publishing his works after his death. I’ve used the so-called Chandos portrait to recreate Shakespeare here - both in his own time and of course as a modern day man (I admit I love the pompous professor look on him). A full YouTube video will be coming soon detailing what we know about his appearance and which other portraits may be Shakespeare.

Despite having many portraits created, Josephine’s appearance is a bit mysterious. Each portrait of her looks just slightly different. They all show a woman with delicate features - deepset eyes with visible lids, a long and sharp nose, and a small mouth with a pointed chin.

There was repeated sentiment from Napoleon’s contemporaries that portraits never seemed to quite capture his true likeness. A friend once wrote that “Probably no one that ever lived had so many likenesses…which generally bear some resemblance of feature and form. But it was extremely difficult to portray or delineate Napoleon’s look.”

Marie Antoinette is one of my all time favorite subjects. I love the modern version I created of her using one of her official portraits, but I wanted to create some in-her-own-time images that use more of her real-life appearance rather than the stylized version. It’s pretty obvious how stylized 18th century French portraits are; the huge eyes, tiny noses, and pinched lips. Full video is now up on YouTube: Royalty Now Studios.

Lady Jane Grey is a figure I’ve touched on before, and I made a modern version of her last year. We just recently made a full YouTube video about her life and appearance, check that out at Royalty Now Studios (link in bio), so I created this “in her own time” recreation for that video. I wanted to recreate her also from the Streatham portrait, which is said to be the closest possible link to Jane. It’s still disputed as a true likeness of the Nine Day Queen, but is generally accepted as a somewhat poor copy of a lost original. It dates from around 40 years after Jane’s death, and includes a “Lady Jayne” description, as well as clothing that matches Jane’s era.