In Milos Forman’s 1984 film, Amadeus, court composer Antonio Salieri seeks out Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at Archbishop Colloredo’s salon in Salzburg. Circling a group of musicians, all dressed identically in powdered wigs and blue uniforms, Salieri ponders, “Which one of them could he be?” But as we soon learn, a homely, giggling fellow, wearing the same court dress as the others but looking disheveled from cavorting with his fiancée in the dining room, turns out to be the musical Wunderkind.
 
How is it that, on the one hand, one of the most sublime composers in history can be portrayed as the grotesque, cackling caricature of Forman’s movie, and on the other, be represented as the smooth-faced matinee idol that graces wrappers of Mozartkugeln? Though both are recognizable to us as Mozart, his true image surely must lie somewhere in between. What did he really look like? For that matter, can we be sure of the portraits of other classical composers? Because we idealize and idolize these artists, we have often felt a strong need to see them as better looking than we are, sometimes even godlike in appearance.
 
In the time before photography, a person’s likeness was dependent on the skill and accuracy of painters, sculptors, and engravers, who could flatter a sitter by removing any defects, enhance an image to increase the subject’s appeal, or create an honest portrait, warts and all. In the case of Mozart, we have several images that show that he was not as smooth and handsome as he appears in the Romanticized 1808 portrait by Burchard Dubeck (above), or the sentimental modern portraits on candy wrappers, but rather more like the ordinary man in Doris Stock’s 1789 silverpoint drawing (right). Granted, in this ivory miniature and in paintings from life (below), he didn’t exactly look like someone who could write heavenly music. But we can be pretty sure he looked nothing like Liberace.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Johann Sebastian Bach has a few puzzling portraits as well, including the controversial painting by J. E. Rentsch the Elder, the “Erfurt Portrait” (left), which is claimed to show what Bach looked like between 1708 and 1717, when he was court organist and concertmaster in Weimar. This painting was restored in 1907, and some slight differences between a pre-restoration photograph and the repair work suggest that changes to the face may have been made to give it a fleshier, rounder, more Bach-like appearance. This image has been published in many books and on numerous album covers, and has become almost as famous as the 1748 portrait of Bach by Elias Gottlob Haussmann (below left). While we may not know for sure what Bach looked like in his youth, or whether Rentsch’s painting may prove to be a portrait of someone else, a group of forensic scientists at the Center for Forensic and Medical Art, Dundee University, have reconstructed a face (below right) that uncannily resembles the image in the Haussmann portrait. Built up from a bronze cast of Bach’s skull, and shaped with meticulous artistry, it makes a fairly convincing 3-D likeness. But just as in the case of the Erfurt Portrait, could the features have been manipulated ever so slightly to achieve desired results, namely, to look like the Bach we recognize?
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The imagery of Ludwig van Beethoven is even more fraught with problems since the process of idealization and myth-making began in the composer’s lifetime, partly at his own instigation. It is known that Beethoven was fond of the first image (below, top left), because it gave him a wild-eyed, leonine appearance. Other versions have developed from this heroic image (below, top right), and it appears that our conventional image of Beethoven comes from these two Romantic portraits, rather than any of the less familiar but more accurate renderings grouped below them. No doubt, this is what Beethoven would have wanted!
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Representations of Franz Peter Schubert have especially suffered from sentimental idealization, and trying to pin down the real composer is difficult, since his portraits are often wildly divergent. Despite their obvious differences, we may put some stock in these two sketches by Leopold Kupelwieser, which show Schubert in 1813 (below left) and 1821 (below right). As someone who knew the composer well, Kupelwieser may be presumed to have noticed variations in Schubert’s physiognomy over eight years, and we may suppose he carefully recorded the appearance of the handsome teen as well as the pudgier adult.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
But idealization of Schubert after his death appears to have greatly affected his later portraits. Compare the unpretentious anonymous portrait of Schubert, thought to be from 1828 (below left), with the glamorized 1875 image by Wilhelm August Rieder (detail, below right), and note that the two convey different indications of Schubert’s significance. Plainly, the idealized portrait shows a clear-eyed and visionary Schubert, i.e., the immortal genius, rather than the drab, possibly depressed, but quite ordinary mortal in the life study.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Similarly, one can study the famous portraits of Frédéric Chopin (below), and note how the artists’ liberties made the composer appear more poetic or dreamy than the rather morose and unattractive depiction in his 1849 daguerreotype (bottom right), one of the earliest photographs of a major composer. The camera may not always tell the truth, but it seems closer to the mark than the paint brush!
 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Obviously, this examination of the pitfalls of portraiture should have no effect on the reception of these composers’ works, but it does serve to remind us that whatever they looked like, they were real people with normal human dimensions and physical and personal flaws. Perhaps knowing this will help us appreciate the greatness of their music even more.