User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/Historical portraits
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Portraits of historical personalities are an important part of many history and biography articles. Unfortunately, for the large majority of people who lived before the age of photography, authentic portraits are unavailable and always will be. Most historical civilizations until quite recently simply didn't do portraits.
This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This page in a nutshell: Before you insert an imaginary depiction of an historical personality in a biography article, think twice whether it really has encyclopedic value. |
In this situation, editors often resort to non-contemporary, imaginary depictions instead. This essay argues that while such illustrations may sometimes serve a legitimate purpose, their use is more often unencyclopedic, useless and even harmful. Below you will find some suggestions about when to include or not to include such depictions.
In a few cases, imaginary portraiture has been contentious in Wikipedia for special cultural and ideological reasons other than those discussed here, most notoriously in the case of depictions of Mohammed. These special cases are outside the scope of this essay, although some of its arguments might also be applicable to them.
What this essay is also not about is the question of when to use non-free material of modern (mostly 20th century) personalities or persons who are still alive. For this, see the relevant guidance at WP:Non-free content. This essay predominantly deals with historical personalities from older periods, where contemporary depictions (as far as they existed) would be in the public domain now.
While this essay mainly addresses images of individual persons, some of its advice also carries over to other historical topics, such as depictions of events, battles, etc.