Jan Steen face swap

Where this one comes from

Jan Steen painted himself around 1670, laughing, in the Rijksmuseum’s panel. He made his living from pictures of households falling apart — drunk parents, feral children, a dog on the table — and he put himself into a great many of them as the worst-behaved person in the room. He also ran a brewery in Delft and later a tavern in Leiden, so he had material.

What is in the picture

He leans back with an arm over the chair, mouth open in a laugh that shows teeth — rare in a century of closed-mouth portraits — in a loose dark coat, against a plain warm ground. Dutch has a phrase, a Jan Steen household, meaning a place in cheerful chaos, and it comes directly from his pictures. The joke of the self-portrait is that he is both the moralist painting the disorder and the man most visibly enjoying it.

When people use it

For admitting it was your fault and being pleased about it. It is the face for confessing to something minor and unrepentant, and it is one of the few pictures here that is openly having a good time.

How your face lands in it

An open-mouthed laughing face is an unusual target: your own photograph supplies the features, but the expression belongs to the painting, so the closer you can get to a genuine grin the better this works. The head is turned and lit from the left, with long hair framing it, and the hair stays. A deadpan photograph here produces an odd hybrid, so bring a cheerful one.

Self-Portrait — Jan Steen, c. 1670. Jan Steen died in 1679, so the painting has been in the public domain for centuries, and the Rijksmuseum reproduction is published as public domain. Source

Also in: Paintings · Self-portraits · Baroque · Dutch Golden Age