Burns to get whole new image as experts rebuild his features

HIS face is one of the most familiar in Scottish culture, but scientists are preparing to give a new perspective on how Robert Burns might have looked in real life.

Scientists at Dundee University are in the final stages of completing a 3D recreation of the poet’s head, based on plastercasts taken of his skull after his death in 1796 and contemporary images of him.

The project is the brainchild of Rab Wilson, the Burns fellowship writer for Dumfries and Galloway, who has been working with the university’s forensic anthropologist department.

He said: “This is hopefully going to be the new definitive image of Burns. We reckon that if you were to transport this back to Mauchline [where Burns lived] in 1785 the people there would say, ‘Oh aye, that’s Robert Burns’. There’s no doubting this is as close as we’re going to get to him.

“It is different from the portraits, and it’s been a fascinating process to see this legendary, mystical almost, figure materialising before our eyes.”

The scientists started work on the head in October last year, when they carried out CAT scans on plaster skull impressions held by Dumfries Burns Club.

However, because the plastercasts are only the top half of Burns’s skull – they were taken by phrenologists who believed wrongly that a person’s intelligence and character could be ascertained by measuring their skull – the team have relied on paintings and written descriptions to add to their knowledge.

The best-known image of Burns is Alexander Nasmyth’s 1787 portrait of him, aged 28, made for the Edinburgh Edition of his poems, although experts believe this was likely to be a flattering impression.

Mr Wilson said one particularly useful reference for the project had been a 1787 silhouette of the poet made by John Miers, which gives a clear outline of Burns’s nose and lips, and an indication of his jaw line.

Following ten months of work, all that remains to be completed is a wig and a set of eyeballs – Sir Walter Scott said of Burns that his eyes “glowed under the influence of feeling” – and the head is expected to be completed by September.

However, Mr Wilson intends to keep the final result tightly under wraps, having recorded a documentary of the process of recreating the poet’s likeness, which he hopes to have broadcast on Burns Night in January.

First Minister Alex Salmond has accepted an invitation to be the first person outside of the project to “meet” Burns’s head.

It is hoped that the finished work will be exhibited at the new Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway, Ayrshire.

Nat Edwards, director of the museum, said: “I don’t think we’ll be surprised if it’s very different from the Nasmyith portrait, but I think the painting is so deeply embedded in our conscious that even if this bust looks very different, I think for most people the mental image they have of Burns will be that one we see on whisky bottles and shortbread tins.”

He said Burns was one of the first literary figures to understand how important his own public image was to his career, and he feels the Bard would have been delighted with the project.

“He’d absolutely love it,” he said. “He’d tease people mercilessly about it, and I’m sure would write something very scathing and very funny – and at the same time be privately pleased that we’re still paying attention to him.”