what's funny about these old portraits is that it's never an unreasonable assumption that the actual person was 50x uglier than how the artist made them in the portrait
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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Trippin' Through Time
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Tripping' Through Time
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Yeah, I read somewhere that the real skill was being able to prettify the kings and queens as much as "necessary"/requested, while still also retaining as much of their recognisable "personality" as possible... Quite a hard job, I imagine, and thus probably dangerous one.
I don't have a source (anymore), but it sounds so plausible.
i'm no expert but i remember reading somewhere that queen victoria demanded honesty/accuracy in her portraits in later years, which really, sets her portraits apart from the "prettified" ones
https://artuk.org/discover/stories/the-most-painted-royal-in-history-queen-victoria-in-portraits
Thanks for sharing. It was quite cool to see the transition.