Yes, that’s a clickbait headline, but a bust that Portuguese artist Emanuel Santos made of his famous soccer-star countryman, Cristiano Ronaldo, didn’t turn out so well. As the Guardian reports:
The sculptor who made the bronze bust of Cristiano Ronaldo has admitted that his creation may not be to everybody’s taste but insisted the Real Madrid striker had given his seal of approval before it was unveiled.
Emanuel Santos, a Madeiran artist, was chosen to recreate the image of the four-time Fifa player of the year which will adorn the newly named Aeroporto Cristiano Ronaldo in Funchal after offering his services to the owner of the airport, where he was previously employed. Santos spent three weeks creating the bust before it was sent to the Portuguese mainland to be cast in bronze.
It was then unveiled on Wednesday by Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and will be on permanently on show outside the terminal entrance. But while social media users delighted in pointing out that rather than looking like the 32-year-old Real Madrid forward the bust was a closer resemblance to the former Republic of Ireland striker Niall Quinn, Santos insisted he was happy with his creation.
“It is impossible to please the Greeks and Trojans. Neither did Jesus please everyone,” he said. “This is a matter of taste, so it is not as simple as it seems. What matters is the impact that this work generated. There is always the possibility of making a difference, I was prepared for all this. I used as a base some photos of Cristiano Ronaldo that I found on the internet, nothing specific. I put the photos next to me and started working on the bust.”
No, some things are not just a “matter of taste.” Some things are simply horrible art!
Here’s former Republic of Ireland captain Niall Quinn, who looks a lot more like the bust:
A couple of tweets:
To the makers of the sculpture – #YouHadOneJob #RonaldoBust pic.twitter.com/oooRxDuI4t
— Fahad Shahud (@fahadism) March 30, 2017
all the content is bad besides this pic.twitter.com/ZUA5bzqpQ4
— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) March 29, 2017
And do you remember this one?
Ha! To be fair, it should be viewed from more angles.
Maybe it’s just damn hard to make a smile with teeth look realistic in bronze.
Dammit, he’s a sculptor, not a Google expert!
Made me laugh.
+1 🙂
I like the bust as a piece of art, but no, it doesn’t look like Ronaldo. Or maybe it’s just a really poor resemblance due to the expression.
Maybe Ronaldo really looks like that when he is smiling lopsidedly.
But the problem of course is that although not impossible, it is very risky to make an acceptable bust or painting of a subject that is smiling. It either works (Mona Lisa)or definitely, definitely does not.
The bust is terrible.
Some problems are that the subject’s eyes are wider set, the space between his nose and lips is longer, and his ears are positioned higher than on the bust. But if C.R. would let the bust wear his sizeable diamond stud earrings, nobody would notice these discrepancies. 🙂
The eyes being too close together is the thing that really jumps out at me. The cheekbones are not right either.
Well, he left off both *earrings!* Throws the whole thing off.
The sculptor of this piece ought to get together with the creator of the former Lucille Ball statue in Celoron, NY (google “scary lucille ball”). I think they’d find they have a lot in common.
Hmmm… I disagree that the bust looks more like Niall. Yes, the mouth looks more like the picture of Niall provided, but the underlying bone structure and the way the flesh hangs on it is much more similar to the photo of Renaldo. The power of suggestion, surface impressions (the quirky mouth and strange angles) and the different facial expressions in the two photos offered may lead some to conclude otherwise, but if one looks closely one sees Renaldo, not Niall. Luckily, it matters not a jot what I or anyone else thinks about this…
It looks like somebody else entirely. If you’d seen a photo that looked like the bust and Ronaldo was in a line-up you’d pick anybody else but him.
Ronaldo looks fairly normal. The bust looks definitely weird.
cr
Is he the guy who can’t stop biting people?
Nope, that player with the cannibalistic tendencies was Luis Suarez.
Terrible bust, doesn’t look like Ronaldo at all, not even slightly.
Scary, those artists who do ‘reconstructions’, from skulls in forensics and anthropology, they do a better job, do they? Do they?
Perhaps the poor statue could commiserate with the one of Lucille Ball, which was also criticized for looking a bit creepy, if I recall.
That bust is a bust. The eyes are too close together, the smile is awful, and it doesn’t look rakishly handsome like Ronaldo does. It’s bigly ugly in fact. It should be given the boot.
Is it not an excellent example of football mimicry? You are an expert! You can tell!
Happy April The First for All!
Gah!