The Emperor's New Face

It’s nearly halloween and whilst I don’t go anywhere dressed up for halloween, I like to do a little something for Instagram. Halloween is all about turning ourselves into something or someone else.

However artist, Haround Binous, has brought to life the busts of Roman Emperors in a series of hyper-realistic illustrations. The artists from Université de Lausanne, Switzerland combined facial recognition technology, Photoshop and historical references to revive all the Roman emperors, from Augustus to Valentinian III.

We can’t really know for sure if the Emperor’s looked like this, as portraits and sculptures tended to follow styles of the period rather than create 100% accurate depictions of their subjects, creating instead a flattering, idealised version - much the way Instagram filters are used today - however, using machine learning technologies and and taking into account the ‘creative license’ the artists of the day used when portraying their leaders, I’m thinking these recreations are probably pretty close. The only thing that seems odd is the shape of some of their heads!

ARTQueen MichelleOctober 29, 20201 Comment