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How Would Classic Paintings Look If Botticelli, Raphael and Goya Had Photoshop

by 5 Comments

lauren-birth-venus-botticelli

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know that we love to call out the way that commercial work overuses Photoshop. But What if the great masters had the liquify brush tool at their disposal? Lauren Wade of TakePart explores this question in a most interesting way.

She takes great masterpieces such as Birth of Venus by Botticelli, Nude Sitting on a Divan by Modigliani and a few other classics dating back as early as 1400ac and gives them the same ‘small boost’ that celebrities and models get on a usual basis. (so much so, in fact, that the US considers banning Photoshopping from ads altogether).

Lauren explains:

Of course it hasn’t always been that way. Throughout art history, painters from Titian to Rubens to Gauguin found beauty in the bodies of women who would never fit into a size 0. But what would these famous works of art look like were they to conform to today’s Photoshopped standards of beauty? We’ve taken a digital liquefy brush to the painstakingly layered oils of some of the most celebrated paintings of the female form, nipping and tucking at will

lauren-grand-odalisqueYou can see more of those at Laurens’ post on TakePart.com.

[What If Famous Paintings Were Photoshopped to Look Like Fashion Models? | Lauren Wade (05/2014) via sploid]

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  • Christian Blencke

    Sorry but your title is misleading. The old masters did have photoshop in the form of a paintbrush and painted how they saw their ideal at the time. This is more a comparison of the ideals of our time to that of theirs.

  • A good concept. But, having photoshop is different from having the intension to use them.

  • we11ington

    You really butchered that … even with photoshop… whats going on with that stomach?

  • Ted Vitale

    I hate this conversation. Photoshop has nothing to do with over idealized depictions of women. Its a tool. Just like the paintbrushes of Goya, Boticelli, and Raphael. The women in their paintings are just as Idealized as ours. At that time, to be more voluptuous was to be more attractive. It meant you were wealthy enough to eat plenty, and not to have to work in a field. So in a sense, this to is an unattainable goal for most women of the time.

    Stop taking things out of context to prove a stupid point. Go complain to your publishers, ad agencies, and corporations that peddle this crap to begin with. Leave Photoshop out of it.

  • I hate this conversation. Photoshop has nothing to do with over idealized depictions of women. Its a tool. Just like the paintbrushes of Goya, Boticelli, and Raphael. The women in their paintings are just as Idealized as ours. At that time, to be more voluptuous was to be more attractive. It meant you were wealthy enough to eat plenty, and not to have to work in a field. So in a sense, this to is an unattainable goal for most women of the time.

    Stop taking things out of context to prove a stupid point. Go complain to your publishers, ad agencies, and corporations that peddle this crap to begin with. Leave Photoshop out of it.

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