An artist has transformed the chipped stone busts of ancient Roman emperors into photorealistic portraits with the help of historical artefacts and creative software. Daniel Voshart, from Toronto, Canada, says that his project of painstakingly colourising and shaping the faces of 54 Principate rulers was'a quarantine project that got a bit out of hand', but it has attracted attention from hobbyists to historians. And he has now released his completed work in a series of stunning portraits and posters that cover 300 years of Roman history. Though more interested in design work for VR for use in architecture and the film industry, the coronavirus pandemic brought Daniel's work to stop and left him with time to explore his hobby of colourising statues. When he came to pick a subject however, he chose to research the busts of Roman Emperors who controlled its sprawling empire during the first three-century-long Principate, despite not being particularly interested in ancient history.

If you make a purchase, My Modern Met may earn an affiliate commission. Please read our disclosure for more info. They are Roman emperors who lived long ago, but they remain embedded in popular imagination since the fall of the last ruler in 476 CE. They've been immortalized as busts and statues in museums, but a new project is helping to visualize what these people would've really looked like while alive. Daniel Voshart, a Toronto-based cinematographer and designer, has created photorealistic portraits of the 54 emperors of the Principate period (27 BC to 285 CE).

Sculpted busts give us an idea of what ancient Roman emperors looked like, but what if they had posed for photo portraits? That's what designer/cinematographer Daniel Voshart explores using AI and Photoshop in his Roman Emperor Project. After gathering 800 images of busts found online, Voshart used the neural-network tool Artbreeder, historical research, and his Photoshop skills to turn them into photo-realistic portraits of 54 emperors of The Principate (27 BC to 285 AD). "Artistic interpretations are, by their nature, more art than science but I've made an effort to cross-reference their appearance (hair, eyes, ethnicity, etc.) to historical texts and coinage," Voshart writes in a Medium post explaining the project. "I've striven to age them according to the year of death -- their appearance prior to any major illness."

An artist has transformed the chipped stone busts of ancient Roman emperors into photorealistic portraits with the help of historical artefacts and creative software. Daniel Voshart, from Toronto, Canada, says that his project of painstakingly colourising and shaping the faces of 54 Principate rulers was'a quarantine project that got a bit out of hand', but it has attracted attention from hobbyists to historians. And he has now released his completed work in a series of stunning portraits and posters that cover 300 years of Roman history. Though more interested in design work for VR for use in architecture and the film industry, the coronavirus pandemic brought Daniel's work to stop and left him with time to explore his hobby of colourising statues. When he came to pick a subject however, he chose to research the busts of Roman Emperors who controlled its sprawling empire during the first three-century-long Principate, despite not being particularly interested in ancient history.