Wikipedia:Historical portraits and pictures

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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WP:PORTRAIT

This page in a nutshell: Before using an imaginary or fictitious image of a historical person or event, consider whether it really has any encyclopedic value.

Many articles on historical persons or events cannot be illustrated with authentic material, as no contemporary portraits or other depictions of the subject exist. Wikipedia editors have often resorted to the use of imaginary depictions from later periods, often by modern artists. However, in most cases such imaginary depictions have no encyclopedic information value, as they cannot convey any actual information to the reader about the subject. This essay argues that the use of non-contemporary imaginary depictions of people or events, outside certain special circumstances where they can be justified, should generally be avoided on Wikipedia.^[1]

Authentic portraits

Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam by Hans Holbein the Younger. Authentic portraits are ideal, but none exist for the vast majority of historic personalities.

Where they exist, authentic portraits, i.e. artistic depictions of a person that purport to provide an individualized, authentic representation of that person's unique looks, based either directly or indirectly on a witness's first-hand experience of their physical appearance, are obviously the best choice for illustrating history and biography articles about that person. Unfortunately, for individuals from most pre-modern cultures, such portraits are unavailable.

Contemporary stylized depictions of individuals

Medieval miniature of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. Useful as a historical document, even if it tells us nothing about what he really looked like.

While most historical cultures didn't produce actual portraits, many did produce other kinds of depictions of individual persons, such as depictions of rulers on ancient coins, miniatures in medieval bookpainting etc. In many cases, these are so heavily stylized that they can't serve to provide a realistic sense of what the person actually looked like – they were never intended to do that. Nevertheless, such items are generally acceptable as illustrations in Wikipedia articles, insofar as they were produced within the subject's own cultural sphere and can provide a sense of the subject's historical context and how they were seen and imagined by contemporaries.

Near-contemporary depictions of events

The same is generally true for paintings and other depictions of historical events, such as battles, political meetings and the like. Even if they do not impart a realistic or authentic idea of what the event looked like, they are generally unproblematic as long as they come from a historical context close to it and impart an authentic idea how the event was interpreted by its contemporaries.

Conventionalized traditional depictions

Paul the Apostle, painting by El Greco. Could be used to document the history of religious veneration, even though as a portrait it is entirely fictional.

Conventionalized, imaginary depictions of religious figures, for example in Christian hagiographic art, can be suitable for Wikipedia even if they come from a much later cultural context, since in these cases the history of the religious veneration of the figure in question is just as much part of the topic of the article as their actual historical existence.

Independently notable artworks

Pythagoras as depicted in Raphael's School of Athens. Famous artworks featuring fictional portrayals can be a useful illustration if explained properly.

Another case where an imaginary depiction will generally be suitable in an article is if it is a well-known, high-quality artwork that is independently notable as such. While such an artwork may tell us little about the historical person directly, it will typically be an easily justifiable part of the coverage of the article, often in a "legacy" section or similar. The inclusion of such an image should normally be accompanied with sourced text that contextualizes it.

Artwork illustrating later views of a person

19th-century statue of Arminius. Useful to illustrate 19th-century ideological views of Arminius, but tells us nothing about Arminius himself.

Similarly, an imaginary depiction can be a valuable addition to an article if it is a notable example of how some later era saw the figure in question, as for instance when a medieval ruler is represented in a famous 19th-century painting or statue. As such depictions will often carry some heavy ideological baggage (e.g. expression of nationalist hero worship etc.), they should never be used in articles without being contextualized through well-sourced textual coverage of how and why they were created.

Modern illustrators' works

Imaginary depiction of Vladimir the Great from a late 19th-century Russian picture book. Non-notable fictional portraits like this usually have no legitimate encyclopedic function whatsoever.

Wikipedia articles generally should not contain imaginary depictions created in later periods if they cannot be contextualized through sourced critical coverage because they lack independent notability in themselves. This is particularly true for items such as public-domain print illustrations from the 19th or early 20th century. Such illustrations are generally useless in providing any valid encyclopedic information. Often they are also esthetically unoriginal and technically mediocre. Since they, too, typically carry heavy ideological overtones, reflecting the idealized, heroicized or romanticized way a historical figure or event was seen in a later age, such depictions may not merely be useless for Wikipedia but actually harmful, as they inject a covert POV perspective into an article.

The same is true for copyrighted artwork by present-day artists offered to Wikipedia under a free license or even produced by Wikipedians themselves. While Wikipedia normally values and appreciates user-created or other free modern artwork, editors should be reluctant to resort to such depictions given the absence of any concrete encyclopedic information value and the danger of covert POV overtones.

Non-free modern depictions

Non-free copyrighted depictions of older personalities or events by modern artists are usually excluded under the non-free content rules of Wikipedia, unless they are artistically notable works that are the subject of sourced encyclopedic coverage in themselves. Otherwise they invariably fall foul of the replaceability criterion: if one artist could create an imaginary depiction of the subject in question, then anybody else, including you and me, could do the same.

General Dos and Don'ts

This should never be captioned simply as "Lothair I". Always add its provenance: "Lothair I (contemporary bookpainting)"

Ahmed, 16th-century ruler of Mauretania. Hundreds of websites have falsely labelled this picture as 8th-century Tariq ibn Ziyad, without ever bothering to find out where it's from.

Avoid images with unclear provenance. Many alleged historical depictions float around on the internet without proper source documentation. Even if you know they are old enough to be free of copyright, if you don't know where they ultimately are from, they are useless for an encyclopedia.
Avoid using images just because other sites use them. Sometimes a historical personality becomes associated with some low-quality, unauthentic depiction on the Internet simply because people on websites and web forums keep copying it from one place to another for lack of anything better.
Always add an informative caption to any non-photographic image explaining the provenance and nature of the depiction (this also applies to infoboxes)
"Portrait" as a term should be reserved for images intended to accurately depict a real person.
Images which are used to illustrate later opinions about a person should be carefully placed in the discussion about those views, lest anyone think the image is an accurate image of the person.
Infoboxes do not need images. If no authentic and useful depiction of a person exists, it is better to leave the box empty.
Always be sure the image improves the encyclopedic content of any article - do not merely use images as fillers or eye-candy.

Notes

^ In a few cases, imaginary portraiture has been contentious in Wikipedia for special cultural and ideological reasons other than those discussed here, most notoriously in the case of depictions of Mohammed. These special cases are outside the scope of this essay, although some of its arguments might also be applicable to them.