Shakespeare face swap

Where this one comes from

Known as the Chandos portrait after an eighteenth-century owner, and attributed to John Taylor, a member of the same London guild as the players. It was painted somewhere around 1600 to 1610, while Shakespeare was alive and working, and it is the only surviving image of him with a reasonable claim to have been made from the man rather than from an engraving of a memory. In 1856 it became the first object the National Portrait Gallery ever acquired.

What is in the picture

Dark hair receding hard at the temples, a trimmed beard, a plain white collar left untied, and a gold ring in the left ear. The earring and the open collar struck later owners as disreputable — one eighteenth-century commentator thought the sitter looked too foreign to be the national poet — and the panel was repainted more than once to tidy him up before modern cleaning took the improvements off again. The ground is a warm dark brown with nothing in it.

When people use it

For a quotation you are not certain about. It suits a literary reference, a dramatic flourish, and every joke about being misattributed.

How your face lands in it

The head sits at three-quarters against a dark ground, lit from the left, with the high hairline leaving most of the forehead open. Easy geometry. The beard and the receding hairline both stay, so the result is you as a balding Jacobean with an earring, which is a good deal of the appeal.

The Chandos portrait of William Shakespeare — Attributed to John Taylor, c. 1600–1610. The painting dates from the early seventeenth century and its presumed painter died long before 1800, so it has been in the public domain for centuries. Source

Also in: Paintings · Famous people