Ever notice how your social media feed is packed with flawlessly edited photos? It turns out this obsession with picture-perfect portraits isn’t new and existed long before Photoshop and filters. Back then, people relied on talented painters to add extra magic to their faces, at least on canvas. We thought it would be fun to take a trip back in time and compare those old-school painted masterpieces with early photographs of iconic 19th-century women. Let’s see how the original “retouch artists” stack up.
Princess Adelheid of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the niece of Queen Victoria
Elisabeth of Bavaria (Sissi), Empress of Austria
Caroline Augusta of Bavaria, Empress of Austria
Carolina Coronado, Spanish writer
Marietta Alboni, Italian opera singer
Amalia of Oldenburg, Queen of Greece.
Maria of Nassau, mother of the first Queen Elisabeth of Romania
Marie of Prussia, Queen of Bavaria
Princess Marie Isabelle of Orléans, Infanta of Spain
Louise Rasmussen, the Danish ballet dancer and wife of King Frederick VII of Denmark
Maria Van Zandt, American opera singer
Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies, the queen consort and wife of King Ferdinand VII of Spain
Isabella II, Queen of Spain
Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies, Empress of Brazil
Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll
Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, the granddaughter of George III
Rani Lakshmibai, queen consort of the princely state of Jhansi, India; also a freedom fighter
Louisa of the Netherlands, the wife of Charles XV of Sweden, Queen of Sweden
Victoria of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Empress of Germany
Florence Nightingale
Meanwhile, here’s another famous face from our century who seems to be aging in reverse, going sans makeup on red carpets.
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