Reportret: gallery of reconstructed portraits

A reportret is a reconstructed portrait, or a portrait that goes back in time. In many cases a contemporary image of a specific personality from world history is not on hand. In order to still form a clear picture of those personages affected, Reportret was set up as a gallery of reconstructed portraits: without anachronisms, respecting contemporary style, and based on historical sources.

© MMIII–MMVIII Marco Bakker — marco@reportret.info — www.reportret.info

Last modified: November 22nd MMVIII. This translation: As English is not the author's native language (Dutch is), please report any detected misspelling, grammatical error, or incorrect usage of certain words. A German translation is also available.

Introduction

Frequently a contemporary portrait (painting, drawing, manuscript illumination, relief, sculpture, or photograph) of a particular historical figure is not available. As a result, non-contemporary portraits — sometimes originating from many centuries after — are often used as illustration material in publications concerning this personage. This practice has a downside. These images were almost without exception made in a style that goes with the time and circumstances of the creator, not of the portrayed. This distorts the image of the person concerned.

For example: Charlemagne. There's no knowledge of any contemporary portrait of this king–emperor from the early Middle Ages. Though he has been portrayed many times in the centuries after his death, these portraits were generally produced in a style from the high or late Middle Ages. And the differences between the early (‘dark’), high (‘Romanesque’), and late (‘Gothic’) Middle Ages are substantial! Moreover, in these pictures Charlemagne was mostly depicted with dress and hairstyle from the high or late Middle Ages and surrounded by architecture, pieces of furniture, or other objects from those times. In short: the image doesn't suit who he really was. Fortunately, in recent centuries artists acquired more historical awareness. They did try to avoid anachronisms. But even their portraits contain style characteristics that can be identified as ‘Neo-Classicism’, ‘Romanticism’, ‘Art Nouveau’, or as modern photographic realism. It's still hard to form a picture of Charlemagne in which he could have recognized himself.

Contemporary image culture can make a portrait more expressive. By eluding every anachronism — anachronisms in the way of depicting as well — it's possible to produce a clearer image of the portrayed.

Aim

Reportret was set up as a collection of reconstructions of missing (destroyed, lost, unknown, or never made) portraits of historical key figures. Each reconstructed portrait intents to put the historical person in a new perspective. Because the person in question has previously been depicted so many times so differently, his or her widespread image will be a confusing one for numerous people. The new portrait should clarify that image: a portrait that comes close to reality, because it contains as few anachronisms as possible and because it was created with as much consideration for contemporary style and image culture as possible. Sometimes even local and indigenous style must be considered.

Of course, resemblance is a substantial feature of any portrait. The reconstruction should at least suggest, on the basis of actual information, what the person concerned could have looked like. Clothing, hairstyle and general build must approach life — as far as contemporary image culture permits displaying realistic details. Nevertheless, it's impossible to remodel the exact facial features. The main goal is to reconstruct the portrait that a contemporary artist could have made. Whether or not it ought to be truly life-like depends on contemporary standards. Often that turns out to be of less importance.

When an archaeological excavation uncovers the foundations of a building, in most cases a reconstruction of that building is drawn. Then, instead of the originally dug up plan, this reconstruction appears as illustration material in various publications. A reconstruction sparks the imagination. Any reconstructed portrait from this gallery should have the very same function: to spark the imagination and — at best — to show something of the spirit of the age and something of the nature of the depicted person.

The objective is ambitious. It's an illusion to believe it's possible to entirely free a reconstruction from the date it was actually created. Nevertheless, the starting point of Reportret consists of that intention.

Set-up

Each portrait is displayed on its own individual page. The portrayed is always shown at full-length, to make the image as complete as possible (1). His or her role in history is discussed very briefly. The way in which the new portrait was reconstructed, which sources were consulted, and which assessments were made, is described in full extent (2). Every page has a reference to the used sources (3; with direct links to the very same sources if they are available on the Internet) and a reference to a larger version of the portrait (4).

To denote dates (years or centuries) the terms ‘common era’ (ce) and ‘before the common era’ (bce) are used here. These terms are non-religious and culturally neutral, whereas ad (= Anno Domini = ‘in the year of our Lord’) and bc (= ‘Before Christ’), still often used in English, are terms with a undesirable Christian charge (certainly because the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, in 6 bce, can't be the actual point of reference). ‘Common’ era stands for the now world wide most commonly used system for counting years. That's the Gregorian calendar with the point of reference that Dionysius Exiguus picked for arithmetical reasons. The genealogical symbols * (asterisk) and † (vertical dagger, not to be mistaken for a Christian cross) respectively denote a year of birth and a year of death.

With intent, the portraits were not artificially aged, with faded colours, damages, stains, or crackle. Ageing is in fact an anachronism in itself. Therefore, the portraits seem to be brand-new. After all, they aren't forgeries, but reconstructions. They appear like they would have appeared at the time. Technique and material weren't imitated either. These were only considered where they strongly influenced, or even determined, specific style characteristics.

All portraits have been gathered on the gallery page. New portraits are added continuously, though irregularly.

All portraits published here are copyright of the author–illustrator. Consequently they may not be reproduced or inserted in productions of ones own, unless for private use only. Naturally, there's no objection to a hyperlink to this page or any other page of Reportret.

© MMIII–MMVIII Marco Bakker. All rights reserved. None of the images and texts on the individual pages of this website may be reproduced, stored, transmitted, distributed, or published in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the author–illustrator.

It's possible though — certainly when educational purposes are involved — to make use of some images or texts, but only after agreeing on a fair compensation. In case of a request like this, please contact the author by e-mail: marco@reportret.info. Note that the portraits can be delivered in all desired formats, sizes, and resolutions: for printed matter (300 dpi–cmyk) for instance, or screen (96 dpi–rgb).

Medium

This website is used as a medium to publish the Reportret gallery. Several icons at the bottom of every page mark the technical characteristics of this particular website and the underlying idea of its design.

 This icon indicates that the html-code of the page was written according to the xhtml-standard of the w3c — xhtml 1.0 Strict to be exact. This means that the document contains xhtml 1.0 elements only. The wasp encourages the use of standards on the Internet. xhtml is a content- and context-based language that doesn't consider the layout of the document.

 This icon indicates that the layout of the page was defined in Cascading Style Sheets — level 2 to be more accurate. The standard for these style sheets is maintained by the w3c too. Not every browser handles the style sheets equally well. Fortunately, it's css's main feature that layout has been separated from content. Every visitor can disable the use of style sheets (in the preferences of the browser), and still access the content.

 This icon indicates that the content is accessible with any browser. No specific browser (Explorer, Netscape, Safari, Opera, Firefox) or special version thereof is required; no specific operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux) is recommended; and no special browser settings (screen size, colour depth) are essential. Plug-ins, like Flash or QuickTime, aren't necessary either. Though the page does use JavaScript, the content remains accessible, even if the browser doesn't support scripting (or when its support has been disabled). Reportret was designed for any browser. This doesn't imply that the design is presented just as nice under all circumstances. Some browser can't deal with the style sheets. However, the use of these may be disabled. Due to consistent use of ‘alt-tags’ the content is even accessible with text browsers like Lynx. And as an incidental result, Reportret complies with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 of the w3c–wai (up to Triple-A conformance). Perceive more about the benefits of accessible web design on Cari D. Burstein's website Viewable with Any Browser, and on the page Accessibility by the wdg.

 This icon indicates that the page does not consist of any frames. Moreover, no new (pop-up–) windows will open. That's a relief to many visitors. Frames can cause a number of problems. Commonly the ‘back’-button doesn't function properly and it can be difficult to ‘bookmark’ a page that has been embedded in a frameset. In a new window the ‘back’-button doesn't operate at all and commercial pop-ups are just annoying. This website consists of only one frame and only one window. More facts in regard to the problems that (bad) usage of frames can yield are to be found on the page What's wrong with frames? by the wdg, and on Jakob Nielsen's page Frames Suck Most of the Time.

 This icon indicates that the page was designed according to the kiss-principle. kiss stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid!” and with ‘stupid’ the designer is addressed, not the user. Designing according to the kiss-principle means striving for simplicity and functionality, omitting any nonessential extras. Simplicity is especially important when information is interchanged. Designing a website in compliance with the kiss-principle means striving for usability and accessibility. Usability, for instance, can be accomplished with a plain navigational structure and the presence of a sitemap. Accessibility can be attained by designing for any browser. The choice to work in accordance with the kiss-principle also manifests itself in avoiding intrusive gif-animations, Flash-intros (long live the ‘skip intro’–button!), banners, sounds, or frames and pop-up–windows. The source code was written with a basic text editor (BBEdit) that allows manual encoding only, hence no wysiwyg. wysiwyg-software only tempts a designer to equip the website with superfluous gadgets. Furthermore, reduced download time — i.e. carefully optimized images — contributes to the simplicity and functionality of a website as well. All about usability is to be found on Jakob Nielsen's website: Usability and Web Design.

 This icon indicates that Reportret was described with metadata according to the standards and controlled vocabularies of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. The metadata of Reportret are available in a rdf-file that conforms to the associated recommendation of the dcmi.

Log

September MMVIII — An entirely new portrait! Hannibal enters the gallery as 13th reconstructed portrait.
February MMVIII — All external links were manually checked and updated. And that was highly necessary. The portrait of Christopher Columbus needed to be more true to life and was therefore completely redrawn.
January MMVIII — The German translation was finished!
October MMVII — After a dormant existence of more than a year work on Reportret is continuing! 10 of the 12 portraits have now been translated into German.
April MMVI — The portrait of Willibrord was improved. The German translation precedes well: another 5 portraits to attend to.
December MMV — The process of building a German translation has started.
August MMV — In spite of the large amount of already existing portraits of Christopher Columbus, another portrait was made — and this time without anachronisms. It's remarkable how many errors and inconsistencies keep on turning up when rereading and comparing the English and Dutch texts. Most of them were fixed.
May MMV — Next in line is the portrait of Vercingetorix.
March MMV — The reconstructed portrait of Willibrord was (finally) finished.
December MMIV — Unexpectedly, Reportret received the Talking Hands Award (Gold Edition) on December 7th MMIV, after being reviewed by a panel of international judges. The purpose of this award is “to reward website authors, who — through their creative excellence — provide a website that teaches, contains teaching elements in sufficient detail, and otherwise leaves a visitor with something of significant value after returning to their normal daily activities”, all with usability and accessibility in mind. Many thanks to those who nominated Reportret for this award!
November MMIV — The portrait of Joan of Arc was completely redrawn.
October MMIV — Reportret's 1st anniversary is celebrated with the addition of the reconstructed portrait of Laozi. The style sheets were slightly adjusted to be fully compliant with nn 7.
July–September MMIV — After a constructive discussion with some Muslims a statement was added concerning the Muhammad portrait. Other adjustments aren't worth mentioning.
June MMIV — Next in line is the reconstructed portrait of Muhammad (despite his warning to all creative mortals).
May MMIV — Most recent addition is the portrait of Jesus of Nazareth.
April MMIV — The portrait of Herodotos was added, the page with links was updated, and the design was modified to compensate for some flaws of Opera 6. Some forgeries were added too, because it's fun te make them, but also to illustrate how they differ from reconstructions.
March MMIV — The source code was provided with values (lang="…") to define the proper language of all parts of the texts. Though only few user agents support the special style sheet that makes those values visible with colour (in fact nn 6, Safari, and Opera 6 do support it), it may be usefull to some.
February MMIV — The portrait of Leif Ericsson was added to the gallery. Besides, all portraits were enhanced and the group portrait was renewed.
January MMIV — Minor changes in the texts were carried through and some images were improved.
December MMIII — Some texts were modified and the portraits of Attila the Hun and Joan of Arc were added.
November MMIII — The portrait of Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin was added and the design was adjusted to solve some problems that occurred with msie 6 Windows and nn 6.
October MMIII — Reportret goes online with the first reconstructed portrait: Charlemagne.
August MMIII — From dissatisfaction with the deficiency of good illustration material the concept of the website Reportret is born.