Famous Paintings And Historical Figures Recreated Using Artificial Intelligence
Marie Antoinette
Nathan Shipley is a San Francisco-based graphics artist who used artificial intelligence (AI) to reimagine a handful of historical figures, cartoon characters, and famous paintings as modern-day people. Continue reading »
Guy Uses Modern Software To Restore The Faces Of Julius Caesar And 23 Other People From Ancient History
Roman General And Statesman Julius Caesar
For many of us, history used to be a bit of a boring topic in school. But, over the years, it has become clear that it wasn’t the topic itself, but the way it was presented—it just didn’t appeal to the younger audience. Continue reading »
3D Artist Refreshes The Image Of These Artists Of The Past
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Artists inspire other artists, hence they get a lot of tributes, ranging from paintings, to musical pieces, to busts and sculptures dedicated to them. It’s no different with Hadi Karimi, who dedicates his time to recreating some of the most legendary artists from the past few centuries in 3D modelling programs like zBrush, Maya, and others. Continue reading »
Mist-Shrouded Churches, Eerie Shipwrecks and Magical Doorways: The Incredible Winning Images in The Historic Photographer of The Year 2020 Contest
These incredible pictures offer a window to history that exists all around.
They are the winning and shortlisted images in the Historic Photographer of the Year Awards 2020, which were unveiled today by broadcaster and historian Dan Snow and historic and cultural travel experts Trip Historic. This year’s awards called on photographers to scour their photographic archive and ‘share their most astonishing imagery of those places which dominate our past’.
Winner: Where History Happened, Palmyra, Syria. “This image was taken before the civil war in Syria at the ancient city of Apamea. I’d dragged my family out of bed early, when it was cold and dark, to ensure we were at the Great Colonnade early enough to catch sunrise and the golden hour. I’d got my timings wrong and we were an hour early so sat around wondering where the sun had gone and waiting for dawn. It was worth the wait. I felt privileged at the time to have the opportunity to visit Apamea, but even more so since the civil war damaged some of these most impressive monuments”. (Photo by Martin Chamberlain/Historic Photographer of the Year 2020) Continue reading »
Vintage Photos Capture People Wearing Masks During the Great Smog in the 1950s
Bettmann
In early December 1952, a thick layer of smog–a combination of cold weather, windless conditions, and sulfurous acidic smoke arising from the abundant use of coal–settled over the British capital. As London had already been infamous for its heavy fog, there was no panic. Continue reading »
Huge Cat Etched Into Peruvian Hillside Believed to Be Over 2,000 Years Old
Archaeologists recently discovered a giant cat ‘geoglpyh’ etched into a hillside in Peru and experts say it dates back to 200 B.C. to 100 B.C.
The giant cat stretches roughly 40 yards (36.5 meters) and was found at the historic Nazca Lines, an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Nazca Lines are a group of very large geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and leaving differently coloured dirt exposed. Continue reading »
Here’s What Nefertiti And Others Would Look Like If They Were Alive Today
Nefertiti
Becca Saladin (previously), who works as a full-time graphic designer, created the Royalty Now series as a way to bring the past into the present and to help us look at history from a new angle. Check out Becca’s newest historical reimaginings below and remember to upvote your faves. Let us know which of the artist’s pieces you enjoyed the most, too. Continue reading »
Cowboys and Indians: Incredible Western Paintings by Mark Maggiori
Mark Maggiori is a French painter who paints modern cowboys in the nostalgic American West. Maggiori’s approach is realistic and academically tuned. Maggiori is a graduate from the prestigious Academie Jullian in Paris, France and currently resides in the United States. Continue reading »
Face of 4000-Year-Old Dog Revealed by Forensic Reconstruction
A reconstruction, commissioned by Historic Environment Scotland (HES), has revealed the face of a Neolithic dog for the first time in over 4,000 years. The reconstruction has been created from the skull of a dog discovered in Cuween Hill chambered cairn on Orkney. Continue reading »
If We Drew Modern Animals The Way We Draw Dinosaurs, Based On Bones Alone
Baboon
When we see illustrations of dinosaurs done by Paleoartists in books the skeletal reconstructions are what many artists depend on when trying to draw dinosaurs.
But what happens when you try to apply that to modern day animals? Continue reading »
Amazing Then-and-Now Photos Show How London Has Changed From Between the 1920s and 2010s
Charlwood Street
The 1920s in Britain, also known as the ‘Roaring Twenties’, was a decade of contrasts. The First World War had ended in victory, peace had returned and with it, prosperity. Continue reading »
Photographer Captures Side-By-Side Portraits Of Famous Historical Figures And Their Direct Descendants
Thomas Jefferson (Left), 1800 And Shannon Lanier (Right) Sixth Great-Grandson Of Thomas Jefferson
Fueled by his passion for history, photographer Drew Gardner recreated portraits of some of the world’s most famous historical figures, featuring their direct descendants as models. Continue reading »
Artist Titus Kaphar Explores ‘UnSeen’ Narratives In Provocative Historic Portraiture
Hanging half loose from its stretcher, a portrait of Thomas Jefferson reveals an image of a black woman behind it. It’s a provocative juxtaposition that raises a question about the relationship between the two subjects. Her hair is covered while her partially shown shoulder and leg are bare. She is brown-skinned with an indeterminable gaze. She evokes both assertion and alarm.
Titled “Beyond the Myth of Benevolence” (2014), the painting by Titus Kaphar was inspired by a Rembrandt Peale portrait of Jefferson made in 1800. Continue reading »
Artist Reimagined Famous Paintings To See What They’d Look Like If They Were Painted During The Coronavirus Crisis
Genevieve Blais is a photo-based artist earning great praise for her work involving art historical and theoretical narratives. The artist’s twisted representation of familiar subject matter characterizes her fantasy world. Her captivating yet sinister work draws on themes of sexuality, mortality and symbolism. Continue reading »
Explaining The Worst Pandemics In History
A somber episode of After Skool tells the history of the world’s worst pandemics and explains what we can learn from them using a combination of whiteboard illustrations and historical photos. Continue reading »
Sleeping With The Devil: A Weird And Wonderful Collection Of Medieval Bedroom Hijinks With Creatures From Hell
The Conception of Merlin – Histoire de Merlin, France (Poitiers), 1450-1455. BNF, Français 96, fol. 62v
The Middle English Prose Merlin at Cambridge University Library MS Ff.3.11, apparently written near the middle of the fifteenth century, not long before Thomas Malory was composing Morte D’Arthur, is thought the earliest piece of Arthurian literature written in English prose. Continue reading »
Here’s What Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Caligula And Others Would Look Like Today
Emperor Augustus (born Octavius, the great-nephew of Julius Caesar)
According to Becca Saladin: “Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by history and archaeology. I think humans perceive the past as a series of events; something like a movie that we can’t really feel or touch. I believe the things that bring us closer to the past are those that truly humanize us – the bodies from Pompeii, the perfectly preserved Inca mummies, the personal objects of those long gone, and more. Continue reading »
Wonderful Photos Of Everyday Life In Postwar Leningrad, The City That Refused To Starve In WWII
It was Leningrad, not Stalingrad that was the Eastern Front’s real World War II humanitarian disaster. Nazi Germany sent hundreds of thousands of civilians to their deaths through starvation and hypothermia. Continue reading »
People In Medieval Art Who’re Getting Murdered But Just Don’t Give A Damn
Medieval manuscripts were the imageboards of their day, full of murderous illustrations, however for some strange reason many people look as if they were bored with life anyway and their killer did them a service all while enjoying it himself. Scroll down to see the funniest examples of medieval art where people are getting killed but just don’t give a damn. Continue reading »
80 Wonderful Black And White Photographs Of The Famous (And Not So Famous) People Who Have Left Their Mark On History
English fashion model Twiggy, born Lesley Hornby. (Photo by Express Newspapers/Getty Images). 1966 Continue reading »
Romanian Artist Colorized Black And White Photos To Bring Memories To Vivid Reality
Amelia Earhart
Accroding to Jecinci: “Hi, I’m Jecinci, a 36 years old architect & 3D Artist from Romania with a passion for colorizing black & white photos. For me, colorizing black & white photographs is a hobby that opens a vibrant and dynamic window into the past, through which memories become a vivid reality. Continue reading »
Incredibly Realistic Sculptures Of People Who Lived Thousands Of Years Ago By Oscar Nilsson
Oscar Nilsson is a Swedish sculptor and archaeologist who specializes in reconstructing faces. In one of his recent projects, he used his skills to hand-sculpt the faces of a handful of people who lived hundreds, some even thousands, of years ago using their excavated bones as a reference, giving us a unique glimpse of how those people might have looked like. Continue reading »
“Selfie”: Photographer Flora Borsi Photoshops Herself Among A Famous Historical Figures
Acording to Flora Borsi (previously): “After the first official picture of a black hole was released last week, I decided to look into the Theory of relativity and I’ve been wondering how cool it was, if I could travel faster than the speed of light, ergo I could travel back in time. While I’ve been making a “selfie” with Albert Einstein (photoshopping myself into a picture of him) I decided to celebrate this amazing discovery with a series of pictures, where I travel back in time. Continue reading »
Stunning Photographs From The Inside One Of The Oldest Bank Archives In Europe
The Banco di Napoli Historical Archives can be considered the largest archival collection of bank documents in the entire world. There are documents dating back to the middle of the 1500s to the present day. Continue reading »
Rare Vintage Photos Of Dwellers Of The Russian North Over A Century Ago
The author of this unique photo collection is a Russian photo artist Nikolay A. Shabunin (1866-1907) who dedicated all his life to the ethnography of his native region – the Mezen country and its outskirts. Continue reading »
