Charles V face swap

Where this one comes from

Dated 1548 and long given to Titian, though the attribution is now doubted and the panel is usually credited to a painter working close to him. Charles V ruled Spain, the Low Countries, Austria, much of Italy and the Spanish Americas at once. Eight years after this was painted he gave all of it away in pieces to his son and his brother, and retired to a monastery in Extremadura, where he died. It is in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

What is in the picture

He sits in black against a dark interior with a window to one side, hands loose, and the Habsburg jaw that four generations of cousin marriage had made a family signature juts out under a thin beard. Nothing in the picture works to impress. There is no armour, no baton, no horse and no crown — remarkable for the most powerful man in Europe — and the whole thing is pitched as a private man in a chair, which was itself a political statement about what kind of ruler he was.

When people use it

For handing something over. It is the picture for the day you step back from a thing you built, whether that reads as relief or defeat, and it does both at the same time.

How your face lands in it

A three-quarter head in soft side light against a dark ground. The beard and the cap stay, and the famous jaw is part of the original underlying shape, so the result keeps some of that outline whatever face goes in. Bring a photograph without hard shadow; the lighting here is gentle and a harshly lit picture sits awkwardly in it.

Portrait of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, seated — Attributed to Titian, 1548. The painting dates from 1548 and every artist proposed for it died in the sixteenth century, so it has been in the public domain for centuries and the museum photograph adds no new rights. Source

Also in: Paintings · Renaissance · Royal portraits