The true face of Beethoven? Not again…
NewsThe Telegraph presents what it claims to be ‘the true face of Ludwig van Beethoven’, reimagined by a Brazilian scholar.
Scientists created the first-ever 3D reconstruction of the treasured composer’s head by analysing his skull, which may have confirmed long-running depictions of him as an unsmiling man with an unkempt appearance.
According to the new model, he had an icy stare, with dark green eyes and wavy, grey, thinning hair…
Oh, yeah?
Read Why Beethoven.
The best likeness is the life mask taken from B’s face when he was around 40 years old:
https://www.capronicollection.com/products/beethoven-life-mask-item-258
This also entirely validates the famous pencil portrait by C.F.A. von Kloeber:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beethoven_1818.jpg
He likes like the noted actor Ving Rhames.
A life mask of Beethoven was made in 1812 which really shows the ‘the true face of Ludwig van Beethoven’. I’ll take the life mask over the this 3D reconstruction.
looks like he’s into disco
It reminds me of real Americans
The Musicological Research Laboratory of the Texas Institute of Technology, led by famous Dr Hofstadter, has recently shown that indeed LvB descended from a member of a North-American native delegation, who visited the French court in 1725 on the request of Luis XV.
https://www.academia.edu/38722739/A_Strange_Embassy_Five_Native_Americans_at_the_Court_of_Louis_XV_Recipient_of_the_S_Eric_Molin_Prize_for_Best_Paper_by_a_Student_EC_ASECS_2016_
Happy Crooked Left Foot, as the 22-year Indian was called, escaped the delegation on one night, took a splash into Parisian night life, fathered a boy, who later became a carpenter in Flanders where he married the daughter of the village trumpeter. Their son was Beethoven’s father who moved to Bonn and became court musician. The inclination to wild behavior and generous alcohol consumption, running in the family, can thus be traced back to Happy Crooked Left Foot, finding its musical culmination in the seventh symphony, especially in the finale, as explained by Dr Hofstadter from TIT (source: Texas Perplexed Gazette issue April 2015).
Fate knocking at the face lift
It’s Cliff Richard!
Am I alone in thinking he looks like Harrison Ford?
I think he looks more like the lesser known actor John Colicos. He played Thomas Cromwell in Anne of the Thousand Days and a Klingon in the original Star trek series.
Ludwig may not have been tall on the podium but we all know: He was big.
Footnote fodder: Franz Klein’s made a life mask of the composer in 1812, at the request of the piano maker Andreas Streicher, from which Klein made a bust. Tradition (reported by Streicher to Theodore Frimmel) has it that Klein’s first attempt failed when Beethoven removed the still-wet plaster from his face because of the discomfort (or fear of suffocation), having only little tubes poking from his nose for breathing. The second attempt succeeded.
Beethoven was an Indian from Andes… stunning revelation indeed…
I think the generated image makes him look ‘eroic[a].
Notwithstanding the white toilet seat around his neck.
Skull reconstruction notwithstanding, I’m sure the man must have been born with smiling facial muscles.
Hey there! Here you can found the original study about facial approximation: https://ortogonline.com/doc/pt_br/OrtogOnLineMag/11/Beethoven.html
That face has not succeeded very much. Fortunately we have a lifelike short movie made during his lifetime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F8r_Vrd674
My first thought was Jay Silverheels.
But how does analyzing his skull tell us if he smiled or not?
I’m waiting for a wax statue
The life mask and the drawing look very much like my German-born father, except my father had bushy eyebrows and a softer expression in his eyes. My father was also a musician and a composer and a genius, universal man. Alas, I have to admit, however, that there was, and is only ONE Beethoven. Serious, bombastic, humorous, tender, empathetic to the human condition. Someone, whose music we need now, more than ever.
How did they know he had dark green eyes and an icy stare by studying his skull?
Sounds all a lot of rubbish to me.