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I found this rather interesting. On the left above is the only portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach, painted by the Leipzig artist Elias Gottlob Haussmann. On the right is a forensic reconstruction based on a bronze cast of the composer’s skull:
Unlike Mozart and Beethoven, who left scores of personal letters and posed for plenty of portraits, Johann Sebastian Bach, who worked as a cantor in Leipzig for 27 years, was a prolific composer, but didn’t leave many clues about his personality.
He only posed for one portrait, by Leipzig painter Elias Gottlob Haussmann, which has been reproduced in countless books.
But can anyone be sure that’s really what Bach looked like?
Working with a cast of the composer’s skull on loan from the Bach Museum in Eisenach, Scottish anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson has created a 3-D representation of the face of a man who died in 1750 at the age of 65.
While the representations seem quite similar to me, the difference in the eyes is interesting. Bach appears a little more stern and irascible in the painting.
As a scientist, and portrait artist who graduated from Cooper Union in 1974, having spent 100’s of hours, researching and portraying Bach, I would say the ignorance of these so-called experts is quite monumental,…especially “the ONLY portrait of Bach which he posed for”…., The portrait You show is the second portrait (1748) by Haussmann, and not the other Haussmann portrait (1746) which had been heavily restored around the (1890’s?) and that hung in the Thomas Schule for almost 100 years, which is the one cited by the authors of, this so-called scientific reconstruction…(so that is two, so far)… NOT TO MENTION the famous Meiningen pastel (by one of Bach’s second cousin G. F. Bach, the Erfort portrait as a young man (questionable- but possible), the Volbach portrait as an old man (often published), and the “Weydenhammer Portrait”, brought out of obscurity through the efforts of Terry Knowles Towe (Face of Bach, web site), not to mention a sketch in ink (you can find on the web) or the famous (possible) family portrait, rediscovered in the early 1980’s,
all of which show strong similarities. Since I have spent probably near 100 hrs doing virtual digital restoration of each of these portraits as well as comparing and cross transmographying many of these with each other, I have quite a bit of familiarity, with Bachs features and find this recent reconstruction, rather silly looking (like a Shrek Cartoon) rather than some kind of serious work. Although it does look a bit like Bach, the sculpture by Karl seffner with the help of a Dr. His in the late 1890’s, used similar techniques and seems to have been carried out with considerably more skill, science, and artistry.
Before I retired from NY, a 7-year-old neighbor brought in from the trash in the rain a print of the Altersbild (Volbach), which I had repaired and now have in CA. Its label on the back said Haussmann, Kassel and Basel. I don’t really know more.