Crushes on long-dead gentlemen

[pjthompson]

norilana brought this up in her blog, so I thought I'd make my confession here. Some years back I was looking for a face to base the description of a character on (not Caius, in case you're wondering), and I came across this guy. He was in a Metropolitan Museum of Art catalog I had, and they'd sampled his portrait from this larger painting.

This guy was perfect, and I found myself really captivated by his image, wondering who he was...sigh. But I really wanted a picture of him looking up "at the camera," so I decided to get fancy. I began looking for someone with golden eyes (because the character had golden eyes) and lo and behold, I came across another long-dead gentleman. This is Albrecht Durer's self-portrait of himself at 28. (Talk about a hunky LDG.)

So I got busy in photoshop (actually an older cousin called Color It!) and came up with this guy. Okay, so I'm no Petrus Christus or Albrecht Durer. I look at the paint job today and it looks pretty crummy, but at the time I was quite carried away. Can you say compulsive? Obsessive? I knew you could. I had a lot of time on my hands, what can I say?

I no longer look for pictures to base my descriptions on. I don't know why, but I don't seem to need to do it anymore. But it is a fun game sometimes.

Comments

[norilana.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's great!! :-)

You know I can competely understand the progression, and I also saw a couple of other hunky guys in passing as I was looking for my Duke guy, but yeah, it's weird how obsessed we can become by something like that -- ancient, long gone, but forever immortalized and somehow reaching out to us through the fog of centuries...

[pjthompson]

Old movies, too. I had a total thing for the young Frederic March, and Pierre Blanchar from a silent movie called, The Chess Player. An odd sort of immortality for them, a strange echo from the past for us.

[norilana.livejournal.com]

Oh heck yeah, movies.

I was just thinking of how jennreese and I both have a crush on Anthony Andrews in The Scarlet Pimpernel. :-)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I absolutely loved looking at portraits in galleries in Europe. Seeing real faces looking back at me, surrounded by symbols of personality and life.

One of the many reasons modern art just doesn't do it for me. But then it doesn't have to any more, as we have photography.

[pjthompson]

True. And I love photography, but the portraits have a life of their own that's somehow missing from all except the greatest photographic portraits (the ones, I guess, that are character shots as well as snapshots). The portraits generally speak to me more--and I guess it's that character thing. Sitting for weeks painting someone, you're going to pick up on a lot of that person's character, I think.

[norilana.livejournal.com]

You and me both, Sherwood!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

PS my portrait crush was on the National Gallery version of the Duke of Buckingham. Rotter that he was, I could see why Hames and Charles both fell in love with him, along with Anne of Austria and a whole lot of other men and women. Hoo yah!

[pjthompson]

I raced right over to google to take a look, but the National Portrait Gallery link isn't working for me. Drat. I'll have to look later. I've observed that many a rotter sits well in portraiture. :-)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

If you have a copy of the Richard Lester Three Musketeers, look at the actor who plays Buckingham there--Simon somebody--it's an eerily close match.

[pjthompson]

Oh yeah. This morning I can totally see what you mean.

[merebrillante.livejournal.com]

Titian's Young Man With Glove (http://victorianweb.org/victorian/painting/italian/titian1.html). You can see a smaller, though full-color, rendering of it here (http://www.viaartis.org/en/Tiziano/PIC_Tiziano-LVR757.php).

Totally in love with this guy when I was in college.

I also fell in love with Alexander Hamilton in my junior year of high school. All the portraits I can find of him online are of his older years, and in that stupid powdered wig, but trust me, when he was young, he was a hottie.

[pjthompson]

Tasty. You'd probably appreciate norilana's duke, too. My mature self likes this guy:

http://www.nortonsimon.org/collections/highlights.asp?period=17H&resultnum=21

It's the humor, mostly. Sex with him seems like it would have been a real romp.

[norilana.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, he is very fine. :-)

My own Duke is here.

[merebrillante.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous. What a fascinating portrait. There's an arrogance to his features, and a hint of a willingness to be cruel, if not actual cruelty.

[pjthompson]

handworn pointed out there's a whole LJ community dedicated just to this!
Here.

[norilana.livejournal.com]

Yup, just went and looked and added the community to my friends list! Woohoo! ;-)

Very very neat.

[pjthompson]

Me, too, lol.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Have you seen historical_love?

[pjthompson]

Thanks, Matt! I guess we're not alone. Too delicious.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed. I've always had kind of a crush on Clara Barton, who has the kindest eyes I've ever seen in a 19th century photograph. I keep meaning to post about that to that community, but I need to find a copy of that photo online first.

[pjthompson]

That community is reassuring, knowing I'm not the only one. Silly humans always think they're the only ones...

[frigg.livejournal.com]

Ohhh cool painting. I do the picture game as well sometimes. Or sometimes I suddenly see present, past and future characters on the TV, on the bus, in the cafe...With the two latter, I try not to stare too much. :)

[pjthompson]

Or sometimes I suddenly see present, past and future characters on the TV, on the bus, in the cafe...

It is interesting when you see a person in contemporary life that has one of those faces from the old paintings, isn't it?