Day after discovery announcement, King Richard III's reconstructed 'face' unveiled
They said the face appeared sympathetic and noble - not that of a man cast by William Shakespeare as a villainous, deformed monster who murdered his nephews, the "Princes in the Tower".
"I hope you can see in this face what I see in this face and that's a man who is three-dimensional in every sense," said Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society, who led the four-year hunt to find the king's remains.
"It doesn't look like the face of a tyrant. If ... you look into his eyes, it really is like he can start speaking to you," Langley told reporters.
A 3D computer image of the face was first created based on a scan taken of Richard's skeleton after it was found in a shallow grave in the remains of a friary church, now located under Leicester City Council's social services department car park in central England. The image was then made into a plastic model.
"NO SLANTY EYES, MEAN MOUTHS"
The reconstruction is faithful to an anatomical assessment of the skull, and about 70 percent of the face's surface should have less than 0.08 inches of error, according to the professor of craniofacial identification who created it.
No portraits of Richard were used for the main facial reconstruction, although the clothing, wig, and some features such as eyebrows, eye, and skin color were based on paintings of the dead king.
The final outcome does bear a strong resemblance to some portraits of Richard - but without some of the less flattering traits that appeared during the reign of Henry VII, his conqueror at the 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field, and the Tudor dynasty that followed.
