Recognize this woman? That's a "reverse engineered" portrait of what Martha Washington would have looked like in her 20s. Forensic anthropologists back-extrapolated from existing portraits, all of which were done when she was advanced in age.
Our image of the mother of our country, vague and insubstantial as it is, is drawn from portraits painted after her death showing a frumpy, dumpy, plump old lady, a fussy jumble of needlework in her lap, wearing what could pass for a shower cap with pink sponge rollers rolled too tight underneath...More at the WaPo link, including a photo of the deep purple, silk and sequin, high-heel shoes she wore for her wedding.
"We always see Martha with a withered face in her old age. But she was quite a beautiful woman in her younger years, and Washington loved her deeply," said Edward Lengel, senior editor at the Papers of George Washington project at the University of Virginia. "What's happening now is revisionist. But I think it's a whole lot closer to the reality of what she was."
Addendum: I discovered by reading a backlink, that the same process was applied to George Washington several years ago. The handsome young couple can be seen in adjacent portraits posted at Sevens.
No comments:
Post a Comment