Hussite warrior Jan Žižka’s face reconstructed 600 years after his death
To mark the 600th anniversary of the death of the famous Czech warrior Jan Žižka of Trocnov, an international scientific team led by Brazilian 3D expert Cícer Moraes has created a digital model of his face. As a basis, experts used the so-called Čáslav calva, part of a skull considered to be an authentic relic of the Hussite warlord.
The motivation for reconstructing the face of the most famous Czech warrior was clear. Jan Žižka of Trocnov is one of the five most important Czech historical figures and October 11 is the 600th anniversary of his death.
Experts from Brazil, the Czech Republic and Italy worked together to produce the digital model of the Hussite warrior’s face using state of the art technology.
The project was carried out by Brazilian facial reconstruction specialist Cícero Moraes, Matěj Šindelář from the research organization Our History, archaeologist Zuzana Thomová from the South Bohemian Museum in České Budějovice, director of the Hussite Museum in Tábor Jakub Smrčka, Brazilian surgeon Thiago Beaini and Italian anthropologist Francesco Maria Galassi.
The reconstruction of Žižka's face was made using a method of structural approximation that is based on statistical analysis of scans of living people and digital models of skulls from archaeological excavations around the world. The method defines metric dependencies in the facial part of the skull and between the bone and soft tissues of a person. It is technology that is also used by doctors and criminologists.
For Žižka's likeness, the team used a digital model of the warlord's skull which was created in 2014 based on a part of the skull, the so-called Čáslav calva, which researchers discovered in 1910 during the reconstruction of the Church of St Peter and Paul in Čáslav. It was examined in detail by anthropologist Emanuel Vlček, who provided the researchers with all the necessary data to complete the project. The experts thus created a likeness of the warlord in his 60s. Matěj Šindelář explains:
“We created two versions of the resulting model. The first, is just the head of the warlord without any facial details and the eyes are closed. That is because we do not know details such as eye, hair and skin colour. So that is the authentic one. The second model was created with some “artistic license” to which we added the characteristic eye patch (Žižka lost an eye at a young age) scar on his face and beard.
The Moraes team have reconstructed many faces of famous people in the past. For example, they have produced the likeness of the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible or the Pharaoh Ramesses II.
Among Czech historical figures, the team has reconstructed the face of the Czech saint Ludmila and the faces of her sons, the Přemyslid princes Spytihnev I and Vratislav I. A year ago, the team reconstructed the face of a woman who lived 45,000 years ago in what is now the Czech Republic.
