Jane Seymour face swap

Where this one comes from

Holbein painted Jane Seymour in 1536 or 1537, within months of her marriage to Henry VIII. She had been a lady-in-waiting to both of the wives before her. She gave birth to the future Edward VI in October 1537 and died twelve days later, and Henry was buried next to her ten years after that. The panel is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

What is in the picture

The gable hood is the most rigid headdress in English fashion history and it frames the face like a shutter, leaving an oval and nothing else. Below it there is more material wealth than a modern reader can easily price: cloth of gold, a pearl-and-ruby pendant, sleeves slashed and pinned. Holbein records all of it at a level of literalness that borders on inventory, and then declines to say anything whatsoever about what she is thinking.

When people use it

For keeping your face still in a difficult room. It is the picture for the meeting where you have decided the safest thing to do is agree with nothing and disagree with nothing.

How your face lands in it

The hood closes the picture around your face on three sides, which is why this works so well — there is no hair to reconcile and no shadow to match, just an oval to fill. The light is flat and frontal. What does change is scale: the headdress is unforgiving, so a photograph taken straight on and centred sits in it far better than one shot from an angle.

Jane Seymour, Queen of England — Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1536. Hans Holbein the Younger died in 1543, so the painting has been in the public domain for centuries; the Google Art Project photograph of it is published as public domain for that reason. Source

Also in: Paintings · Royal portraits · Tudor portraits