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A self-portrait by an Unknown Artist felt a little ironic. He’s literally right there!
🎨 This is my entry for the FLORA Museum Challenge.
I chose Self Portrait, created by an unknown artist around 1800–1805 and currently on view in The American Wing at The Met.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/21209
I used it as a starting point to imagine what we can’t see: his studio and the moment he painted this very self-portrait.
🖼️ Unknown Artist, meet the world outside your frame.
#FLORAMuseum @FLORA
this is great, well done!
Nice work
this is really funny, I never thought that people that paint stuff could be using those same clothes when doing it😂
I could have created him in his PJs honestly hahaha
The 'he's literally right there' line got me. Out of everything in the collection, what pulled you toward an unknown artist's self portrait instead of one of the famous ones?
I think that’s exactly what drew me to it! Because neither the artist nor the portrait is famous, it felt like there was no established story I had to follow. That gave me much more creative freedom to imagine who he was and build my own world around him.
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Our entry for the @FLORA Museum Challenge!
We picked Eirene, the personification of Peace, from The Met.
The idea was simple: when we look at a piece of art, we all imagine something different.
So we played with that. Different people looking at the same sculpture, each one creating their own version of it in their head!
This is great!! Don't forget to include your Met reference link too!
THE RISING
What if four paintings from different centuries could tell one story?
For the Flora Museum Challenge, I wove together Poussin's "Blind Orion," a stone Ganesha sculpture, Watteau's "Mezzetin," and Thomas Cole's "Titan's Goblet" into a single journey.
A blind hunter searches for the sun through trials of humility, listening, and endurance proving that seeing isn't always done with eyes.
Created using Flora AI Canvas with dozens of iterations on narrative structure, visual poetry, and Baroque cinematic language.
Met Archive References:
Nice !!
This is my 2nd Submission
Check my 1st submission at this link:
https://on.contra.com/CbjhLm
Inspired by: Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga, Francisco Goya, 1787–88, from The Met's open archive.
Link to Original Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436545
I liked this painting because of the boy at its center, Manuel, dressed in a striking red suit, holding a magpie on a string while three cats watch him from the shadows. Even as a child's portrait, it felt tense, like something was about to happen. It looked like a moment frozen right before a story unfolds.
What I made: I turned Manuel into a toy doll, kept his red suit, his pose, his face, everything the same, just changed what he is. In my video, a father buys the doll from a toy shop and gives it to his little daughter, and they walk out together. I chose a girl instead of a boy on purpose, it felt like giving Manuel a second life completely outside the world he was painted into, away from the cats, the cage, the tension, just a toy being loved.
How I made it: I downloaded the painting image from The Met's open archive, then imported it into FLORA, connected the picture to a text prompt node, then connected both the picture and text prompt node to the video node I also made an element Doll, and selected the Seedance 2.5 model with a 30 second clip. I kept the workflow as simple as possible.
Why I made this: I wanted to take Manuel out of the painting and out of the museum, and give him an actual childhood, even 230+ years later. I think his portrait still holds so much presence that it deserves to live on, just now as something a child can actually hold and love, not just look at.
Instagram post link:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Dc8SwEJMwP3/
Twitter(X) post link: https://x.com/AhmadSauleh/status/2096539462402466095?s=20
Awwwww so sweeet, ideaaa!!!