The 3D model of Mary, Queen of Scots is the face of a historical divide

[microrobert]

The 3D model of Mary, Queen of Scots is the face of a historical divide

Mary Queen of Scots: Image: National Museum of Scotland.

Their faces look back at us out of portraits, marble busts and old photographs. The people of the past are as human as we are, maybe more so, and yet their noses are longer, their faces thinner, the skin more sallow or dry or scarred. This is not just a product of different artistic styles, but a glimpse of a great divide in history.

A newly released 3D modelling of the face of Mary, Queen of Scots reveals how strange 16th-century portraits look if we see them as real faces: Mary, as in her paintings, has bags under her eyes and less-than-dewy skin. Her portrait is part of a recent vogue for revisiting portraiture in digital exercises of wildly varying scientific value, from medical reconstructions of faces to people who are descended from Napoleon and Cromwell being inserted into ancestral portraits to dressing classical statues in hipster outfits.

The 3D model of Mary, Queen of Scots is the face of a historical divide : Archaeology News from Past Horizons

[Graham]

We also have a death mask of her, so hope they used that..