Beethoven face swap

Where this one comes from

Joseph Karl Stieler painted this in Vienna in 1820 and it is the source of nearly every image of Beethoven since. Stieler got only a few sittings — the composer had no patience for it and the hands had to be invented afterwards — and put the manuscript of the Missa Solemnis in them, a work that was then years from being finished. Beethoven was forty-nine and by that point could hear almost nothing.

What is in the picture

Grey hair going in four directions at once, a red scarf at the throat, a dark coat, and a landscape brushed in behind. He holds a pencil in one hand and a bound manuscript in the other, open at a page headed for the Missa Solemnis. The brow is furrowed hard and the eyes are aimed somewhere past the painter. Stieler smoothed the face considerably; contemporaries described a pockmarked complexion that is nowhere in the picture.

When people use it

For working on something difficult and being short with people about it. It suits a deadline, a long project, and anybody who has just been interrupted.

How your face lands in it

A head turned three-quarters, with the light arriving from in front, framed on both sides by a large mass of unruly hair that stays exactly where it is. Easy to land and heavily disguising. The scowl belongs to the painting, so a neutral photograph comes back looking a good deal more annoyed than it went in.

Beethoven with the manuscript of the Missa Solemnis — Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820. Joseph Karl Stieler died in 1858, so the painting has been in the public domain for well over a century and a faithful reproduction of it gains no new rights. Source

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