Aristotle with a Bust of Homer face swap

Where this one comes from

Rembrandt painted this in 1653 for Don Antonio Ruffo, a Sicilian collector who had written to Amsterdam asking for a philosopher and left the rest to him. What came back was a picture about the price of success: Aristotle in a gold chain given to him by Alexander, resting a hand on a bust of Homer, who had none of that and wrote the Iliad. The Metropolitan Museum bought it in 1961 for a sum that made the evening news.

What is in the picture

Black and gold, lit as if one candle were doing all the work: a white sleeve blazes, the chain catches, the bust glows faintly, and everything else falls away into brown. The hand on Homer’s head is gentle and slightly hesitant. Rembrandt loads the paint thickly in the lit passages and leaves the shadows nearly bare, so the picture is physically built the way the idea is — substance where the light falls and almost nothing everywhere else.

When people use it

For weighing up whether the thing you got was worth what it cost. It suits a promotion with strings, a paid gig you are not proud of, and any late-night reassessment of the arrangement.

How your face lands in it

The head is smaller in the frame than in a straight portrait and lit from one side only, so half of the finished face sits in shadow. Bring a clear, well-lit photograph and accept that the result will be moodier than the input. The beard and the wide black hat stay, and between them they do most of the ageing for you.

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer — Rembrandt van Rijn, 1653. Rembrandt van Rijn died in 1669, so the painting is in the public domain everywhere and the Google Art Project reproduction is published on that basis. Source

Also in: Paintings · Baroque · Dutch Golden Age