
Using machine learning to recreate photorealistic portraits of Roman Emperors - elorant
https://voshart.com/ROMAN-EMPEROR-PROJECT
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ericjang
This is undoubtedly cool, but I worry quite a lot about people who aren't
educated about ML interpreting these "historical renditions" as a "ground
truth forensic". Rendering fossilized animals and coloring black and white
photographs is also cool, but when you start to render the bone structure and
"caucasian-ness" of statues, it starts to veer into some uncomfortable racial
and ethnographic territory.

What data and models were used to synthesize these predictions?

~~~
cik2e
You mention black and white colorization and that was my first thought upon
seeing this. The statues are already super “photo-realistic” so I’m guessing
this was a pretty similar process.

On a completely different note, I am not sure what you’re getting at with the
racial stuff. Like what are you suggesting? That perhaps some of the emperors
weren’t totally Caucasian but rendering them as such from the best available
evidence is somehow racist? In my humble opinion, trying to find racial
undertones in every tangential thing is a distraction from the real
conversations that we should be having. And there’s a real possibility of
alienating people that are otherwise sympathetic to the cause.

~~~
sengstrom
These images were rendered with a "white" bias. Facial features is one thing,
but skin color is clearly not conveyed by statues, yet a clear choice was made
here.

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ummonk
Given the preponderance of blonde emperors, it would be reasonable to assume
emperors in general were rather light-skinned.

~~~
sengstrom
Yet these renderings were not made with _that_ choice.

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liability
There are a fair few of them depicted as what I'd consider blonde. Augustus
particularly.

~~~
riffraff
Augustus was described as "subflavum" which is often translated as "blonde"
but is more likely to mean "light brown".

Sadly this _is_ an area which is indeed full of bias.

~~~
liability
Is that not what 'blonde' generally is in adults? An image search for 'blonde
man' returns men I'd consider 'blonde' which hair which seems objectively
light brown (except those with obviously bleached highlights.)

~~~
riffraff
I wouldn't know.

The color of Augustus here[0] is definitely blonde for me, bordering on
platinum, while what I meant is that it might as well have been darker, i.e.
[1] which I would call "light chestnut".

[0] [https://voshart.com/ROMAN-EMPEROR-PROJECT](https://voshart.com/ROMAN-
EMPEROR-PROJECT) [1] [https://external-
content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...](https://external-
content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fae01.alicdn.com%2Fkf%2FHTB1Jee4LpXXXXaXXFXXq6xXFXXX4%2F2016-New-
Short-Wavy-Light-Brown-Color-Glamorous-Fashion-Full-Synthetic-Hair-Men-
Wigs.jpg_640x640.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)

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karlp
Unlike other people I find the portraits surprisingly diverse, I expected to
see very white faces considering most "realistic" representations are from
white actors and white statues erase features. Not a perfect project but
interesting.

~~~
liability
Yeah a lot of those guys look pretty swarthy (e.g. like me.) I can't say I
expected that.

Caligula looks as I expected him though.

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grawprog
A lot of people seem to be taking the term 'photorealistic' a little bit too
literally, when we say video games have photorealistic graphics, people don't
assume they are literally photos of things.

These are just 3d models of statues created to look as lifelike as a photo.
Nothing more nothing less.

They're no more accurate or not than the original statues. Unless we were to
go back in time and physically see these people there's really no way to tell
either way.

It's just an interesting interpretation generated by some algorithms and a
large sampling of data. It is what it is.

~~~
thomasahle
> They're no more accurate or not than the original statues. Unless we were to
> go back in time and physically see these people there's really no way to
> tell either way.

That's why the author uses multiple historical descriptions of the looks of
each emperor. So he can make the pictures more accurate than the original
statues.

He also uses paintings and other statues for comparison.

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cblconfederate
This is fantastic. Some of the reconstructions look convincingly italian.
There is a slight bias towards making their faces more square than they are in
statues (and probably RL too), e.g. Caligula.

It's interesting to think that these emperors would find the obsession with
exact skin tones in the comments here rather weird.

Also, with great power comes a brutal way to die.

~~~
regularfry
Fairly regularly at the hands of your own bodyguards, going by some of the
later entries.

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jl6
What’s the consensus on whether Roman statues were intended to be realistic,
or perhaps were idealizations, or even whether the statue makers had the
ability to truly capture realistic features rather than work to a “type”?

“Lely's painting style was, as was usual at the time, intended to flatter the
sitter. Royalty in particular expected portraits to show them in the best
possible light, if not to be outright fanciful. Lely's painting of Charles II
shows what was expected of a painting of a head of state in the 17th century.
It emphasizes the shapely royal calves - a prized fashion feature at that
time.”

[https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/warts-and-
all.html](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/warts-and-all.html)

~~~
Bayart
There's not _one_ Roman style and there were wild variations across different
eras. I'll skip the archaic and early Republican stuff because it's either too
rough or derivative to be called specifically « Roman ».

Late Republican busts are assumed to be _very_ realistic. My understanding is
that they're largely derived from mortuary masks made for the cult of
ancestors that was prevalent at the time. It's obviously impossible to say how
accurate they were without direct comparison to remains, but busts from that
era show aging and « ugly » traits prominently.

The Imperial era with its state-sponsored cult of personality started the
trend towards idealism. Defects were smoothed out, people represented at their
best and efforts were made to have them impersonate attitudes and virtues. The
busts of the _Pax Romana_ remain highly individualized and it's easy to tell a
character from another, even though they always looks somewhat too good.

It started getting _weird_ with the Third Century Crisis, the Empire breaking
up and the Tetrarchy. Portraiture became abstracted to the point it was more
about representing the office that the person occupying it. Look up the
sculpture of the Tetrarchs that's in Venice or the Colossus of Constantine,
they're well known examples.

Being a good fit for Christianity, that's the style that continued into the
Middle Ages, and the reason why people assume that artists became terrible in
« the Dark Ages ».

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hliyan
Noting down a weird phenomenon: I'm a huge admirer of Marcus Aurelius. His
_Meditations_ is sitting on the night stand next to me as I type this. But
seeing him rendered this way somehow diminished the almost super-human image
of him I had built up in my mind. He's just a man here.

~~~
saeranv
As you probably know, Marcus Aurelius would not have wanted you to think of
him as a super-human! He writes a lot about his fallibility and his attempt to
live a stoic life despite his failures.

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hliyan
In my mind, that's what makes him "super-human" \-- his ability to reflect
upon himself is a skill that most average human beings don't possess.

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reddog
These days we mostly make statues of football players and coaches (both real
football and metric football). I guess these are as close as we get to
emperors.

But despite modern techniques for capturing a 3D image, they rarely look like
the living counterparts. Nick Sabens statue looks more like Andy Griffith.
Gary Patterson’s statue flatters by shaving off several pounds. Does anyone
think the Rocky Balboa statue looks like Stallone?

Is there any reason to think that the Roman emperors statues are any more true
to life? Even if I was the most talented sculpture in the world, I know that
if I was commissioned to do a statue of a still-living Caligula I wouldn’t
include any warts.

~~~
liability
> _Does anyone think the Rocky Balboa statue looks like Stallone?_

(This is the only one of those I've seen in person.)

I do actually. It's obviously not a perfect laser scan of his head, but I
think it's quite clearly a depiction of the man, including the characteristic
harsh lopsided nature of his face (which apparently is the result of nerve
damage he sustained during birth.) That aspect of the statue is perhaps
underplayed a bit, maybe out of respect, but I do think it's at least a
recognizable reasonable depiction of him.

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NiceWayToDoIT
This is super cool, but I have noticed blue eyes and hair, as that gene was
extremely rare at that time, what kind of referees have you used?

And one more thing I want to add, each time I see coloring of WW1 or WW2 or
this one, suddenly that history becomes not so distant and those people do not
look so technologically backward. On that note somehow war atrocities in my
mind become unreal...

~~~
ogogmad
According to one Quora answer [1], 10% of Italians have naturally blond hair
and 30% of them have blue eyes. I don't see why Italians at that time should
look much different to Italians today.

[1] - [https://www.quora.com/Are-blonde-hair-and-blue-eyes-quite-
co...](https://www.quora.com/Are-blonde-hair-and-blue-eyes-quite-common-in-
Italy)

~~~
jaclaz
Maybe because in the several centuries in between some exchanges (mixed
marriages) with the rest of Europe, including the northern countries where
blue eyes and blond hair is more common took place?

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murat124
Here's what's said about Caligula[1]:

> hair and beard worn long for a time after death of his sister.

Humans are curious beings. If my memory serves right his sister died AFTER
Caligula went nuts so at this point in his life he had already gone murderous
after recovering from an almost fatal sickness (or poisoned) but when his
sister died of fever his murderous psycho heart must have felt so broken (or
perhaps felt a bit nihilist) he grew full beard. Maybe there's a human history
of letting beards grow when shit happens.

[1] [https://medium.com/@voshart/appearance-of-the-principate-
pt-...](https://medium.com/@voshart/appearance-of-the-principate-pt-i-
efa3c759d2b6)

~~~
cblconfederate
growing a beard (and hair) to honour the dead is still practiced in southern
greece at least

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dbg31415
In college we had a professor who went over some of the things these guys did
in their spare time. This article sums it up a bit. Really helps to put a face
to the name... =P

[https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-11-most-depraved-things-the-
roma...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-11-most-depraved-things-the-roman-
emperors-ever-di-1479671517)

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JoeAltmaier
Vespasian looks uncomfortably like Lyndon Johnson.

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WalterBright
I bet those emperors would be quite pleased to know that millions see their
faces two thousand years later.

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narag
I find Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero unconvincing, "too normal" to fit
the troubled characters that I first knew of watching I, Claudius.

Maybe I'm biased, but I feeel the difference even in the images that the
reconstructions are based of.

Augustus seems very well done.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I don't know, when I saw Caligula, I thought "Wow, that's exactly how I
imagined he would look", like he had that same immature-yet-assholish look of
Joffrey in Game of Thrones.

~~~
narag
The generated face seems a little wider. Also the eyes of all of them seem
very calm. I expected more on the wild side.

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mvn9
Wasn't Gaius Julius Caesar [1] the first emperor? How come he is missing?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar)

~~~
ysw0
Caesar died before the Roman empire was established. His adopted son Augustus
recreated the republic into an empire and is the first emperor.

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chkaloon
I don't know, Gordian II's bust looks more like Pete Townsend than the ML
version would indicate. Maybe it's the eye color.

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TwoBit
Most of the later emperors are listed there as "killed". Why be an emperor if
you have an 80% chance of being murdered?

~~~
vermilingua
Because for a time, you get to be _emperor of Rome_. We still know their
names, and their faces, thousands of years past. 80% seems decent odds for
that kind of immortal fame.

~~~
regularfry
What they knew at the time is that they would be gods.

They also knew that they would become almost unimaginably rich.

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Tainnor
I hope you're gonna do the Dominate too. Would love to get a look at
Diocletian or Constantine.

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iandanforth
Aurelius looks odd, most of his statues have him with much curlier hair.

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jungletime
Marcus Aurelius looks like a chill dude. Tallest to shortest?

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skykooler
I find it interesting how much some of them resemble current famous people
(for example, Augustus who resembles Putin with more hair). I wonder how much
of that has to do with celebrities possibly being more represented in the
training data?

~~~
riffraff
don't be fooled: this is a photorealistic rendering of statues and coins. We
have pretty precise images of Augustus, except for colors.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus#/media/File:Statue-
Au...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus#/media/File:Statue-Augustus.jpg)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> We have pretty precise images of Augustus, except for colors.

What? We have many statues of Augustus, but they are known not to be modeled
on Augustus. Those are images of some other random guy.

~~~
riffraff
what I mean is: it's not some ml software that came up with a putinesque
visage, it's just a recoloring of the statue, which already had that nose,
oval cheekbones etc.

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mauritzio
Too symmetric features in most cases to be true...imho

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strangeloops85
Yeah - the statues are not necessarily accurate depictions to begin with.

~~~
dwd
You would probably expect the artist to idealise the features to a degree for
their health's sake. A Christiano Ronaldo statue would not go down well with
any that had delusions of being a deity.

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I_HALF_CATS
As the creator I must say there is a lot of misunderstanding in all the
comments above but people are making many valid points. On a side-note you
might be interested to see that I have tried to reconstruct that horrible
Ronaldo statue.
[https://twitter.com/dvoshart/status/1287888497286750208](https://twitter.com/dvoshart/status/1287888497286750208)

~~~
dwd
There's a ton of memes where people have skewed photos to look like the statue
that are hideously amusing.

The statue should have looked like what you produced: I can only guess bronze
was hard to work with or redo when it goes horribly wrong.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
Is it just me or does Augustus look a lot like Vladimir Putin?

~~~
liability
I see it too; I think they both share a weak chin, long cheeks, and light
hair/eyes.

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dhosek
Interesting that Nero and Caligula resemble, more than anything else, frat
boys.

~~~
regularfry
They were young, well nourished, and not hugely into keeping fit.

