Red-haired Ivan the Terrible, the strange head of Nefertiti, blue-eyed Pushkin: What celebrities from the past really looked like

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Sometimes stereotypes appear in unexpected places. For example, one artist painted the king-king blond - and everyone started to paint him like that. And he actually was, for example, a brunette. Or bald! Fortunately, now more and more historical justice is being restored.

Ivan the Terrible: not a fatal brunette

Ivan the Terrible is usually portrayed as lean and black-haired, with an aquiline nose and a tenacious gaze of black eyes. Well, the last two details of the appearance correspond to the truth. However, it has been reliably established that the hair of the first Russian tsar was red, like that of his mother, Elena Glinskaya. By the end of their lives, they turned quite gray, but did not completely lose color. In addition, Grozny grew very fat in his old age and probably suffered from advanced syphilis. This, however, had an effect on the smell emanating from him rather than on his appearance.

Alexander Pushkin: blue-eyed heartthrob

Since his African blood was felt in Pushkin's features, for almost two hundred years in a row he was portrayed as a burning brunette with brown eyes. And in life he was the owner of dark blond hair, and even then not always: little Sasha Pushkin was reddish blond. And his eyes remained blue all his life.

There was also a second incorrect way of portraying the main Russian poet: with a sharp nose. This is due to the fact that this is how he drew his own profile. In fact, the poet was embarrassed by the ignoble outlines of the nose that nature let him out, and he embellished it a little - by the standards of his time. Pushkin's nose at the tip was a "drop", round, slightly thickening - like his famous ancestor Hannibal.

In general, many portraits of Pushkin during his lifetime from professional artists have survived, but nevertheless, over and over again in the illustrations we see little Sasha - a dark-haired, and an adult - sharp-nosed and black-eyed.

Prince Vladimir: most likely not blond

There are no accurate portraits or descriptions of the appearance of Prince Vladimir, but we are used to presenting him as in many paintings, in films and cartoons: a blond with a short nose and light eyes. There is, however, an incident. In our time, the appearance of his son Yaroslav the Wise is well known: he was a brunette with an aquiline nose. It is difficult to assume that Yaroslav went to his mother, since his mother was Rogneda, a Scandinavian girl, the daughter of Prince Rogvolod, who seized Polotsk during the division of the eastern Slavic lands by the Scandinavians.

It turns out that, with a high probability, Yaroslav's mother was blonde or red-haired, and there is no reason to think that she had non-faithful facial features. In this case, Yaroslav succeeded as a father, and Vladimir Saint was actually a brunette with an aquiline nose. However, it is possible that he is also light-eyed. Perhaps the Rurikovichs constantly felt Vladimir as a stranger, not only because of his Slavic blood, but also because outwardly he stood out strongly among his brothers and uncles?

Nefertiti: did not preserve beauty all her life

From the charm of the famous sculptural portrait of the ancient Egyptian queen, a myth arose, which is still popular: they say, she kept wonderful beauty all her life, and her husband did not stop admiring her. Various beauty secrets are served under this sauce: your husband will never grow cold towards you if you, like Nefertiti, massage your legs in time and drink healthy drinks.

In fact, Nefertiti was aging at the same speed as other ladies of her time, and as soon as her beauty wilt, her husband lost interest in her and moved her to a separate palace. Unfinished. True, there is a more optimistic version - not to say that it is at least something confirmed: Akhenaten simply gave her a new name and appointed her co-ruler.

Nefertiti's big problem was that she only gave birth to daughters to her husband. Since only a man could have been on the throne for most of the history of Ancient Egypt, this meant that some stranger (most likely a son-in-law) inherited after Akhenaten. It is not surprising that after the sixth daughter, Queen Kiya became Akhenaten's main wife.

It is also unknown how typical Nefertiti looked like for an Egyptian. She could also be a princess from some distant country. However, her skull, which is noticeable by the way the crown is held in the sculptural portrait, was deformed in a certain way - stretched back and up, like a cucumber. Including such a deformation of the skull led to the characteristic posture, known to us from the ancient Egyptian images of the pharaohs and their wives: so that the elongated skull does not outweigh, they strongly stretched the neck forward. By the way, now imagine Nefertiti without a headdress trying to hold on to her alien skull. She also shaved him. However, now it is even fashionable.

Alexander the Great and Vlad Tepes: not heroes

These two rulers of the past are often portrayed as powerful and tall. At the same time, it is known for certain that both were slightly below average in height (and noticeably below the "short man" Napoleon - who was not exactly short). However, both really had an athletic build.

A feature of Alexander the Great was also a smoothly shaved face, which was considered shocking: a man had to be bearded. But the Macedonian did not want to hide his youth and beauty. In addition, he had thick curls, the color of which, however, is argued about - some believe that they were very light, because, according to legend, they were "golden", others believe that just brown hair could be called "golden" a yellow tint, if you so wanted to emphasize the version of Alexander's birth not from a person, but from a deity. In any case, on the famous antique fresco depicting Alexander, he is the owner of dark blond hair.

However, it is unreliable about the beauty of the king - it is known that once Hephaestion, Alexander's friend and lover, was mistaken for a king, since Hephaestion was both taller and much more beautiful than the great conqueror. So there is a possibility that the appearance of the king was openly flattered.

By the way, in the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, it was popular to portray those portrayed with golden hair - or at least with a golden sheen over their real hair color, so do not trust too much of every portrait from the past. Well, the most famous portrait of the young Vlad Tepes was generally drawn a hundred years after his death. True, he is most likely a copy from a lifetime portrait, but it is unclear how accurate this copy is and how skillfully the original was made.

The further, the more, perhaps, we will learn what people looked like centuries ago: Modern technology has allowed scientists to get to the bottom of the truth.