His prominent jaw, a sign of identity of the Habsburgs, was a striking feature
You have probably seen more than one or two portraits of the emperor Charles V. Handsome, ugly? It is always said that painters tend to exalt goodness and diminish defects. Did this happen with Charles V? Here is a brief physical description of his appearance.
This June, the magazine ‘Historia National Geographic’ dedicates a report to the most intimate side of the emperor Charles V, signed by Óscar Raúl Melgosa Oter, professor at the University of Burgos. We recommend you read it so that, if your knowledge of the emperor is scarce, you can get a better idea of what he was like, especially from this lesser-known side.
As for his physical appearance, Óscar Raúl Melgosa Oter has collected some notes by Alonso de Santa Cruz, a Spanish historian of the Renaissance and owner of a life that is also well worth knowing. In 1539 he moved to the court of Charles V in Toledo, where he stayed for six years and, among other things, started his book ‘Astronómico Real’.
This allowed him to come into contact with the emperor, which gave him time to scrutinise him and then describe him on paper. He wrote of him that «the emperor Don Carlos was of medium build, with large and beautiful eyes, aquiline noses, red and very flat hair, a broad, round and well-proportioned beard, a thick throat, a broad back, thick and strong arms, medium-sized and rough hands, and proportionate legs».
As for what was most striking about him («his greatest ugliness») was «his mouth, because his teeth were so disproportionate to those above, that the teeth never met, which resulted in two damages: the first was that his speech was very hard, and his eating was very difficult; because his teeth did not meet, he could not chew what he ate, nor digest it well».
