All hail Cecilia Azcarate, the Internet queen behind the best rapper/art Tumblr created since Beyonce Art History and The Carter Family Portrait Gallery. Azcarate's Tumblr, B4XVI, pairs photographs of rappers with their counterparts from pre-16th century art. Kanye West, A$AP Rocky, and Wiz Kalifa find lookalikes in Early Netherlandish paintings and Mesoamerican sculptures.
"I got interested in the iconography of power," she told Complex via email. "Is there a timeless representation of swag?" From the side-by-side images on her Tumblr, apparently not.
With the help of her friend, film director Ferdinando Verderi, Azacarate began to sort through images of art created before 1500, which she gathered from the Metropolitan Museum's website. "It's my favorite place on the Internet along with Soundcloud," she wrote. "Then I started remembering all the Flemish, and the ancient civilizations in Italy, and then the furs, the chains, the gold, etc." Such finery led Azacarate to draw connections between the rich and famous from long ago with today's kings of bling.
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[via Dazed]
