A team of Italian researchers succeeded in reconstructing Raphael's face in 3D from a plaster cast of his skull. The remains of the famous painter, kept in the Pantheon, have also been authenticated, the researchers announced Thursday in a press release.
“The analysis of the plaster cast […] carried out in 1833” enabled this reconstruction. Recurring doubts about the authenticity of the painter's remains, buried under the Pantheon in Rome, tormented his admirers for centuries. "We weren't sure that the remains […] were really Raphael's," recalls Professor Mattia Falconi.
Researchers have succeeded in reconstructing the face of the painter Raphaël in 3D https://t.co/kPdIu3Fnud
- Vanity Fair France (@VanityFairFR) August 7, 2020A 3D print on display in a museum
"Facial reconstruction is an interdisciplinary technique capable of recreating, based exclusively on the morphology of the skull, the face of a person at the time of his or her death", explain Cristina Martinez-Labarga and Raoul Carbone, two scientists who participated in the project. The latter made it possible to establish "for the first time" that these remains indeed belong to the emblematic artist of the Renaissance.
The researchers also used the painter's self-portraits to compare the results of their work. This research "opens the way to future studies on bone remains, intended [...] to determine certain characters of the character linked to his DNA", such as the color of the eyes, hair or skin.
A full-size 3D print of Raphael's bust will be on permanent display at the museum in his birthplace in Urbino (Italy). Mourned by his contemporaries, Raphael was entitled to a grandiose funeral at his death in the Vatican. He produced many major works, much of which is in the Vatican.
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