Art World
Seeing Double: Meet 6 Art-Historical Celebrity Doppelgängers
If doppelgängers are likely to share DNA, what do A-listers have in common with their lookalikes?
If doppelgängers are likely to share DNA, what do A-listers have in common with their lookalikes?
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Have you ever walked through a museum and thought you caught sight of your uncle, only to realise you’ve stumbled into a room of Rembrandts? “Doppelgänger” is a German word meaning “double walker” and it’s been found that when two strangers look remarkably alike they may well share DNA and personality traits as well as a face. We’ve scoured art history for the best celebrity doppelgängers we can find of today’s A-listers, and see whether they share any personal qualities with their lookalikes.
Fittingly, Thunberg’s doppelgänger essayist Louise de Broglie, Comtesse d’Haussonville, was also famously independent, outspoken, and liberal.
When the artist was looking for a models for his painting Work (1863), he saw this child selling oranges in the street. Bella Ramsey’s a proud vegan, so perhaps a love of fruit and veg would have united this pair.
The unknown sitter in Modigliani’s portrait also has the face of someone who’s been called a “spare.”
Just like Marie Bracquemond, Keanu Reeves’s mother Patricia Taylor was a creative. She worked as a costume designer for huge stars like David Bowie.
We can’t quite put our finger on the personal similarity between Spain’s King Philip IV and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, but there’s something there–or rather, not there–behind their eyes.
We can’t choose between these two on who we’d want to play the composer Franz Liszt in a biopic. All three achieved huge successes when young: Liszt was performing in professional concerts from the age of nine, Daniel Radcliffe was 12 when he starred in the first Harry Potter film, and Timothée Chalamet was 14 when he made his first TV appearance as a murder victim on Law & Order.
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