what’s funny about these old portraits is that it’s never an unreasonable assumption that the actual person was 50x uglier than how the artist made them in the portrait
Yeah, I read somewhere that the real skill was being able to prettify the kings and queens as much as “necessary”/requested, while still also retaining as much of their recognisable “personality” as possible… Quite a hard job, I imagine, and thus probably dangerous one.
I don’t have a source (anymore), but it sounds so plausible.
i’m no expert but i remember reading somewhere that queen victoria demanded honesty/accuracy in her portraits in later years, which really, sets her portraits apart from the “prettified” ones
https://artuk.org/discover/stories/the-most-painted-royal-in-history-queen-victoria-in-portraits
