Working with a cast of the composer's skull on loan from the Bach Museum in Eisenach, Scottish anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson has created a 3-D representation of the face of a man who died in 1750 at the age of 65. . . .
"We carried out a laser scan of the skull which allowed us to recreate the musculature and skin of the face on our computer system," she told reporters. "This is really the most complete face that can be built from the available reliable information." . . .
Bach's protruding under bite and the slight asymmetry of his face are evident in Wilkinson's image. Yet the technique is not 100 percent accurate. Bones don't reveal how thick the fat layers were on Bach's visage, how deep his wrinkles ran and what color his eyes were. . . .
She was forced to rely largely on Haussmann's portrait, combining art with science. The painting has been said to bear a canny resemblance to other portraits by Haussmann, reported the daily Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, which casts some doubt on its accuracy.
Wilkinson's rendering may be as close as science can get to knowing what Bach looked like, but minor details -- signs of age, his expressions, the hue of his skin -- remain shrouded in mystery.
"As far as we can ascertain, this is how Bach would have looked," Wilkinson said.
Oh, OK. The Haussmann portrait is reliable enough when Wilkinson needs soft-tissue detail, but Bach's pigmentation is a complete unknown--and, just to be safe, better give him brown skin, brown eyes, and black eyebrows. It's the scientific thing to do--after all, modal pigmentation in Thuringia is extremely swarthy, isn't it?
(Incidentally, the skull itself was authenticated based on its resemblance to the Haussmann portrait. If we're going to throw out the portrait evidence, there's no basis for positively identifying the skull Wilkinson's reconstruction is based on as Bach's.)
In reality, the evidence indicates Bach had a fair to medium complexion, brown to blond eyebrows, and predominantly blue eyes. Bach's skull (described as "massive") is clearly northern European in type:
For more information on Bach's appearance, see Teri Noel Towe's comprehensive Face of Bach site, which includes information on the recovery and authentication of Bach's skull.