Edward VI face swap

Where this one comes from

Painted around 1546 and attributed to William Scrots, the Netherlandish painter Henry VIII appointed as king’s painter after Holbein died. Edward was eight or nine and the heir; his father died the following January and he became king at nine, reigned for six years through a council of adults, and died at fifteen. He is the reason his mother, Jane Seymour, is the wife Henry is buried beside.

What is in the picture

The pose is his father’s: feet planted, shoulders squared, one hand at the dagger. It is the Holbein formula for Henry VIII scaled down to a child, and the mismatch between the stance and the face is the whole picture. He wears cloth of gold and crimson and a cap with a white feather, against a Turkish carpet. Look at the hands and the shoulders and it is a monarch; look at the face and it is a serious boy who has been told to stand still.

When people use it

For being handed responsibility you did not ask for. It fits the junior colleague suddenly running the meeting, and any caption about wearing an outfit that belongs to somebody older.

How your face lands in it

A clear, front-lit head, not large in the frame but sharply painted, so the result holds together. Do read what the picture is doing before you use it: the body and the clothes stay a child’s, and an adult face above a nine-year-old’s shoulders is the joke whether or not you intended one. The cap sits above the hairline and touches nothing.

Edward VI of England — Attributed to William Scrots, c. 1546. William Scrots was active until about 1553, so the painting has been in the public domain for centuries; Wikimedia Commons publishes the reproduction as public domain on that basis. Source

Also in: Paintings · Royal portraits · Tudor portraits