Emma Hamilton as Circe face swap

Where this one comes from

George Romney met Emma Hart in 1782, when she was about seventeen and had been passed between men since her teens, and painted her obsessively for the next nine years — as Circe, as a bacchante, as Cassandra, as Nature, sixty-odd canvases in all. She went on to marry the British ambassador to Naples, become Nelson’s mistress and the mother of his daughter, and die in debt in Calais in 1815 at forty-nine.

What is in the picture

Loose auburn hair falling everywhere, a white classical shift, an arm raised, and a landscape that has been brushed in rather than painted. Romney worked fast and left most canvases at this stage, which suited the subject: the appeal is movement rather than likeness. Circe in the Odyssey is the enchantress who turns Odysseus’s men into swine, which is a striking role to assign to a teenager in the year you meet her.

When people use it

For being the most interesting person in a story that is not about you. It suits a dramatic photo, a costume, and any caption with a mythological excuse in it.

How your face lands in it

A large head turned slightly and lit softly from the front, with the hair well away from the face on both sides. Easy. The original is loosely painted, so a slightly soft photograph fits better here than a very crisp one, and the raised arm and the drapery do the theatre for you.

Lady Hamilton as Circe — George Romney, c. 1782. George Romney died in 1802, so the painting has been in the public domain for over two centuries and a faithful reproduction of it acquires no new rights. Source

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