A nice guy with kind features. Scientists presented a reconstruction of the image of Saint Adalbert

Saint Adalbert lived in the second half of the 10th century, he was the second bishop of Prague. The unveiling of the image of the saint was part of the launch of the new publication Posunúté milénium, which maps the more than a thousand-year history of the archdiocese.

The digital copy of the saint’s skull was examined by a team of experts from the Czech Republic, Brazil, Poland and Australia led by the Brazilian Cicero Moraes. Among others, 3D designers, anthropologists or doctors participate in the result. Czech geoinformatics scientist Jiří Šindelář and photographer Martin Frouz also worked on the digital estimation of the image of Saint Adalbert.

“First, it was necessary to create a digital copy of the saint’s skull. This is done using the multi-frame photogrammetry method,” Šindelář said. The method consists in taking many photos of the skull that overlap and from which the program subsequently creates a 3D model.

The skull of St. Audrey is not preserved in its entirety, it is missing the lower jaw and part of the left cheek. According to Šindelář, before reconstructing the face, the skull needs to be completed, for which the method developed by the research team is used.

By researching many skulls and faces, experts came up with new relationships and ratios between individual parts of the face. This allows them to better estimate the missing parts of the skull. According to Šindelář, the method has also found application in operating rooms, it is used by plastic surgeons, for example, to reconstruct a deformed face after a car accident.

“According to the new methodology, we completed the missing parts of the skull and the missing lower jaw. Subsequently, it is necessary to combine two methods, the anatomical and the soft tissue depth method. The first method uses unambiguous information about the attachment of cranial muscles, while the second method uses knowledge of the thickness of soft tissues according to specific cranial dimensions ,” said the geoinformatics expert Šindelář. A professional publication was also created on the approximate appearance of St. Audrey.

Shindelář first introduced the scientifically estimated form, which is black and white, without hair or beard, and has closed eyes. The color of the skin, eyes, hair and beard and their arrangement are elements that cannot be read from the bones. According to Šindelář, the subsequent colored reconstruction with hair and beard is a painting of a saint with an artistic contribution.

The research was presented on Thursday by representatives of the archdiocese on the occasion of the launch of a new book about its history. The Bishopric of Prague was established in 973, so the book was created on the 1050th anniversary of its foundation.

For Moraes, Vojtěch is not the first Czech saint whose appearance he reconstructed. In 2021, he and his team presented the effigy of Saint Ludmila. He similarly reconstructed the faces of other historical figures. For this, it uses software intended primarily for doctors, who can use it to process data from computed tomography and plan surgical interventions.

Saint Adalbert, better known abroad under the confirmation name Adalbert, lived in the second half of the 10th century. He came from the Slavníkov family. He received his education in Magdeburg. After returning to Prague, he became an assistant to the first Czech bishop Dětmar. After his death, he became the second bishop of Prague. Among other things, he was responsible for the founding of the Břevnov Monastery in Prague. After the slaughter of the Slavniks, Vojtěch undertook a missionary journey to the Baltics, where he was killed while spreading the faith.

Vojtěch was declared a saint in 999. In 1965, Pope Paul VI made him the main patron of the Prague Archdiocese. The feast of St. Audrey falls on April 23.