Okay, this is because I love history!!

[miss taken]

I found this site doing some googles on Joseph Smith this morning.

I found this one terribly fascinating.

http://www.comevisit.com/lds/js3photo.htm

Apparantly he was hit in the face with a rifle butt when he fell from the window. He propped himself up against the wall, and a young man came and finished him off by hitting him in the face.

There is some interesting stuff from the RLDS (coc?) who exhumed his and Hiram's bodies in 1928.

A really good site!!

Mary


http://www.comevisit.com/lds/JS.JPG

[miss taken]

Joseph was what he was, but they were wrong to kill him I feel. Quite a barbaric act really.

Mary

[Jeff_Ricks]

I found this site doing some googles on Joseph Smith this morning.

I found this one terribly fascinating.

http://www.comevisit.com/lds/js3photo.htm

Apparantly he was hit in the face with a rifle butt when he fell from the window. He propped himself up against the wall, and a young man came and finished him off by hitting him in the face.

There is some interesting stuff from the RLDS (coc?) who exhumed his and Hiram's bodies in 1928.

A really good site!!

Mary


http://www.comevisit.com/lds/JS.JPG
Maybe it's just me but I've wondered if the photo of old Joe is a composite. The eye's look just a little too large in proportion to the size of his head, and as the webpage points out, "This 'graininess' is probably due to the gross enlargement from the original daguerreotype, however there is a startling photographic quality to the eyes." I think it's a composite. Possibly more fakery by an organization that has a history of making up "The Truth."

Jeff

[miss taken]

I'm no expert, you could be right on that Jeff! The coat looks authentic, the face does look grainy, as well as his shirt and bow tie?

I got kind of more interested in the skull analysis and the fact that when they exhumed his skull the face was missing.

I also thought the analysis of the death mask with comparisons to some of the later paintings based on the death mask made sense. ???

Mary

[Born Free]

Maybe it's just me but I've wondered if the photo of old Joe is a composite. The eye's look just a little too large in proportion to the size of his head, and as the webpage points out, "This 'graininess' is probably due to the gross enlargement from the original daguerreotype, however there is a startling photographic quality to the eyes." I think it's a composite. Possibly more fakery by an organization that has a history of making up "The Truth."

Jeff
The face definately looks unnatural in its relationships to me. I need to check a dentist friend, but I think the outside of the mouth normally lines up with the inside of the eyes.

Check out the size of his eyes, relative to the size of his mouth. The eyes appear to have been enlarged, which has the effect of making the face more appealing unconsciously to the human mind. Babies have larger eyes, and we feel attracted to them and animals with larger eyes.

Daryl

[noodle]

Hmmmm....my first impression when looking at this picture is that he looks like a vampire. If he cracked just a wee bit of a smile, we'd see a couple 'o fangs. I find it rather creepy. :D

[Jeff_Ricks]

The face definately looks unnatural in its relationships to me. I need to check a dentist friend, but I think the outside of the mouth normally lines up with the inside of the eyes.

Check out the size of his eyes, relative to the size of his mouth. The eyes appear to have been enlarged, which has the effect of making the face more appealing unconsciously to the human mind. Babies have larger eyes, and we feel attracted to them and animals with larger eyes.

Daryl
Here's what Joe really looks like:

http://www.i4m.com/think/jpeg/joseph-smith-photo.jpg

[peter_mary]

Maybe it's just me but I've wondered if the photo of old Joe is a composite. The eye's look just a little too large in proportion to the size of his head, and as the webpage points out, "This 'graininess' is probably due to the gross enlargement from the original daguerreotype, however there is a startling photographic quality to the eyes." I think it's a composite. Possibly more fakery by an organization that has a history of making up "The Truth."

Jeff
Jeff,
My impressions were exactly the same, and I was kind of freaked out by the photo 'cause it was so "wrong." The face dimensions are screwy, the head dimensions are screwy, and if I photoshopped the hair that badly I would be embarrassed! It's blocky, the lines are too crisp for an old daguerreotype, and it feels more like a painting to me, except for the coat.

So I went and googled Joseph Smith Photographs, and this information popped up pertaining to this exact image (which turns out to be the site Mary was pointing us to...oops! Should have checked there first!) Anyway, here it is for everyone else:

Evidence suggests, the Prophet's son Joseph Smith III, submitted a photographic copy of his father's daguerreotype to the Library of Congress in 1879. A daguerreotype is a small unique image that can only be duplicated by being re-photographed. Clear reproduction presented a problem because the majority of daguerreotypes in 1844 were only the size of a large postage stamp. The Library of Congress copy is an 8x10 inch print, which would be an obvious enlargement of a small original daguerreotype.

This 1879 duplication was done with film and equipment that by today's standards would seem quite primitive. It has been retouched around the hair, coat, on the cravat-or necktie-and the vest. Joseph's pompadour hairstyle, considered fashionable at the time , has been poorly frisked or masked along the outline. This retouching has caused the loss of softer, finer, transitional hair between the parted sections. Joseph's face seems free of any artistic retouching, but there is an overall "grainy" quality that causes the image to be less than one might expect from a photograph. This "graininess" is probably due to the gross enlargement from the original daguerreotype, however there is a startling photographic quality to the eyes.

This photo may be all that is left of the original image, as the daguerreotype has not been found. It was good that Joseph's son saw the need to safeguard his father's photograph with this copy so that over 150 years later we can now see what Joseph Smith really looked like.

It is believed by a few that this photograph is merely a painting. Careful study of the data compiled by experts shows this belief to be incorrect. Much excitement has come from the comparative studies of this image and a death mask made of the Prophet just after his death. Experts in Facial Surgery, Forensic Pathology, Plastic and Facial Reconstruction, Art, Art History, Archival, and Photographic History, have put together information that not only substantiates the photographic nature of this image, but sheds new light on the history of Joseph Smith in a unique and extraordinary way.
I'm in the skeptics camp for now.

Then I found this:
http://www.helpingmormons.org/images/joseph_smith.jpg
So which came first...the painting, or the dag? They are CLEARLY the same image...Truly, I don't know. It could very well be that the painting was made using the dag. Anyone know the origin and date of this painting? This is the same portrait on the cover of "No Man Knows My History". If anyone has their copy handy, you might be able to get the name of the artist and the date of the painting. (Unfortunately, I loaned my copy out, and it never found its way home again...)

[peter_mary]

Here's another with the exact same look and feel:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Ovalportrait-josephsmith-Carter.jpg/180px-Ovalportrait-josephsmith-Carter.jpg

[peter_mary]

This one has Joseph in a mirror image of the others...but it does make one suspect that everyone had a single image that they were working from...

By the way, this is probably a composite image, combining a well-known portrait of Emma with the Joseph image in reverse.

http://restorationbookstore.org/Merchant2/images/articles/josephemma.jpg

[noodle]

This is the same portrait on the cover of "No Man Knows My History". If anyone has their copy handy, you might be able to get the name of the artist and the date of the painting. (Unfortunately, I loaned my copy out, and it never found its way home again...)

Speak, and ye shall get the name of the artist to whom this portrait is attributed. :)

I just happened to have my copy of NMKMH handy. It says that the cover painting is by:

Adrian Lamb, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Funny thing...I googled Adrian Lamb and National Portrait Gallery, and Joseph Smith (all together), and basically got nothing. Wonder where this portrait is now?

[peter_mary]

Speak, and ye shall get the name of the artist to whom this portrait is attributed. :)

I just happened to have my copy of NMKMH handy. It says that the cover painting is by:

Adrian Lamb, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Funny thing...I googled Adrian Lamb and National Portrait Gallery, and Joseph Smith (all together), and basically got nothing. Wonder where this portrait is now?
Okay, this clears up which came first...the dag or the painting. Since Adrian Stymets Lamb lived from 1901 to 1988, he was working from something...and probably from this daguerreotype. Interesting.

Thanks, mamajama!

[peter_mary]

It was so simple, I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner! Of COURSE his head was tampered with...LOOK!

Who would want THAT showing up in the Smithsonian Institute's National Portrait Gallery! Emma was always so embarassed that she usually made him wear a hat, but he felt he'd earned 'em and he shouldn't hide 'em for his one and only portrait.

Joseph III never could accept who his father really was, though, and must had the image doctored. This way, he could deny the claims that his father was a polygamist AND the devil incarnate!


:D


I know, I know...back to outer darkness.

I'm gone.

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b6df32b3127cce96c3c6a614da00000015108AbuHDJs2at4

[free thinker]

The picture I have as an avatar is the most accurate. You don't actually think Smokin Joe could have corraled all those women without a proper goat and stache do you? Come on guys. This is all so very academic. :cool:


ft

[noodle]

It was so simple, I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner! Of COURSE his head was tampered with...LOOK!

Who would want THAT showing up in the Smithsonian Institute's National Portrait Gallery! Emma was always so embarassed that she usually made him wear a hat, but he felt he'd earned 'em and he shouldn't hide 'em for his one and only portrait.

Joseph III never could accept who his father really was, though, and must had the image doctored. This way, he could deny the claims that his father was a polygamist AND the devil incarnate!


:D


I know, I know...back to outer darkness.

I'm gone.

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b6df32b3127cce96c3c6a614da00000015108AbuHDJs2at4

LOL! Now that's funny. Must've been hard for Joe to keep those hidden from the public. Now, can you add that stache and "goat" for ft? ;)