Laura Cumming: There's a wonderful conversation that takes place between two painters:
Walter Sickert, and Edgar Degas, in Paris. And Sickert is visiting and he says to Degas:
'Why do you always go on the omnibus?'
And Degas says, 'I always take the bus because we all want to look at each other'.
The compulsion to look at faces is universal.
Caroline Wilkinson: So I think we're fascinated with faces because we use them all the time -
for communication, and we get quite a lot of information about people before we even talk to them
just from looking at their faces.
So because we use our faces all the time for distinguishing between people
and finding out if they're similar to us, or different, then I think that holds a fascination.
And looking at people from the past, and how they appeared
and comparing them with us is also a big fascination.
Cumming: When you look at a portrait the first thing you see is the face - the first thing.
And it's only after you've looked it, and taken that in -
in exactly the same way that you take in a person you meet in the street,
that the work reverts to an actual work of art, and you start to appreciate how it is painted
and how much is being said about the person - really are they accurate likenesses?
And what depth of truth are they carrying about the person themself?
There's a famous quote from John Singer Sargent, and he says:
'a portrait is a painting where there is something wrong about the mouth'!
It's a flippant remark but it goes to something quite deep, which is:
how is the portrait painter really going to capture that likeness, and is the likeness a fixed thing anyway?
Robert Steele: First thing we knew about it was when the gallery contacted to ask if we'd be prepared to sit for
a portrait by Ken Currie, so we didn't have to think about it too much [laughs].
It was a real honour and privilege to do that.
So we met with the artist who explained that he would create these life masks
to give him an idea of the three-dimensional structure of our faces.
And then he wanted to visit us while we were working - rather than having sort of formal sittings.
We were sent a small black-and-white photograph of the painting, so we some idea of what it looked like.
Then we were invited to the first showing of the painting at the gallery,
and of course we had no idea what size it was, we didn't realise it was going to actually be life-size
so the impact was really quite breathtaking.
A good portrait somehow tells you a bit about the personality - at least you think it tells you a bit about the personality.
If you look at a really good portrait, you sort of feel - not only do I know that this person looks like
but I sort of feel as though I kind of know them already.
I mean it looks like me - or it looks like me when I was that age [laughs].
And also I do think it captures a sort of seriousness of purpose of what we do
and something about the kind of unknown quantity of what we do, because at the end of the day
we're dealing with a disease that we don't fully understand.
And I think that the painting captures that very well.
Cumming: This is a beautiful, beautiful portrait of Mary de Guise, who is married to James V.
It's by Corneille de Lyon, who's a - I think a wonderful French painter.
It's very early, a very early painting, it's about 500 years old, and I think it's quite outstanding.
This painting has a strange history - it was bought by a member of the public
and knew, I think, completely instinctively who this was
but there was a lot of resistance, as there so often is, in the gallery world
because there was no documentary evidence of who the sitter was.
I think the owner of the painting trusted his eyes very well and got her spot on - who she is
but the galleries in Scotland waited a long time until they could find another
in this case I think a drawing, that showed Mary of Guise, and they could match it up and so on.
If I didn't know that she was spirited, I would certainly know this from looking at the painting.
She was brave woman I think. She's widowed young, she has one child, she gets married to James -
King James in Scotland, she arrives in Scotland, both of her children die, he then dies
possibly of heartbreak, some people say.
And she, though she did not have to, remains in Scotland to look after her daughter
whose face you very shortly are seeing here - Mary Queen of Scots.
Wilkinson: How and when people are represented can have an effect on how their appearance is perceived
and with Mary of Guise, as with also Mary Queen of Scots, there are portraits of them both
during their period of mourning.
So something of that is placed into the image by the artist who created the portrait.
So, it's terrifying working on famous historical figures, because people have so much invested in them
and people have their own opinions of them - especially when it's someone like Robert Burns
who has a very romantic persona as well as you know his farming persona
were two completely separate and parts of his character.
What we try and do is to follow all of the scientific standards, regardless of who the skull belongs to
and what we're trying to produce is the most justifiable depiction based on all the evidence.
In the case of Robert Burns there was a cast that was made when his remains were moved in the 19th century
And sometimes we have extra information about an individual from portraits or from written texts.
So in historical investigations we use as much information as possible
and then we follow the anatomical procedure of building the individual muscles onto the skull
and then we use some of the extra information to tell us about how fat the person was
or what their hairstyle was like, or what eye colour they had, to give that finished realistic facial depiction.
Cumming: This is Alexander Nasmyth's famous portrait of Robert Burns
and when I say famous, not just famous - world famous.
This is the one and only authenticated painting of Burns in his lifetime.
His son, also called Robert Burns, testified that this is exactly what his father had looked like.
This is the Burns whose face is so famous, that if I simply did a kind of
line like that, and a nose like that, and a little bit of - you know
and the two very, very bright eyes, you could probably work out that it was Burns I was looking at.
So Burns, as we know him through this likeness, is always looking off to one side
there is always a hill behind him, there's always a bit of a glowering sky,
he's always got a rather red cheek as if to suggest 'bonny good health',
and also the wind in Scotland, and the trees are there and it's you know it's a very romantic portrait.
Wilkinson: That was kind of interesting because his skull is huge!
When we came to do the reconstruction though, we we took a laser scan, and took it in the computer,
and you don't really have a sense of scale in the computer system.
So we finished the head, and then when we had a 3D print made of it, it came back it was massive!
And I was really worried that it was too big, and that we got the sizing wrong,
and we went back and measured everything and actually then
when we looked at some of the historical text, it is noted by many people who met him
that he had a very big head, and he had enormous eyes.
Cumming: I'm going to look now at a reconstruction of Burns' head by Caroline Wilkinson.
I'm slightly trepidatious about it - having the image of Nasmyth in my mind.
Well! [Laughs] Um...
Actually I want to say I think that painting is a very good likeness.
Um, very good likeness! I think almost - it's authenticated it for me.
It's a very big head, very big face, and with these famous glowing eyes.
I think it's very, very like the painting.
I think we can assume, from here on in
that the portrait of Burns in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is spot on