Wednesday, August 8, 2012

People of the Bible Came From Where??

A couple readers left comments on my People of the Bible post asking about the original art source for the cards.  One reader left the name of a few of the paintings, but I figured I try to hunt down all fifteen.  Along the way I may a pretty surprising discovery.

This is just speculation on my part, but...want to guess what Topps used as its source for finding the original artwork for these cards?

...A Christian art house??  Nope

...The Vatican??  Wrong again

So where did People of the Bible come from?
Topps used the same source that any elementary school student uses when writing a report...
...Wikipedia!

They really knocked themselves out on this one.  If you go to Wikipedia and do a search on the 15 people featured on the cards, for nine of them the first picture on Wikipedia is the one on the Topps card.  For three others, you need to scroll down the page a little before you come to the picture Topps used.  And for David, you have to go to the page for Goliath, but there you'll find the picture first.

The only two not in Wikipedia are Luke and Mary Magdalene.  Finding the original for Mary Magdalene was pretty simple.  Luke's, however, was not.  In fact, I still haven't found the original.

Here are the cards, side  by side, with the original artwork, compliments of our friends at Wikipedia.

















Here's the Luke card, the one I struck out on.  


I found a couple pictures that were close, but none that matched exactly. Maybe one of you will have better luck....and don't bother checking Wikipedia.

7 comments:

  1. Half of the A&G insert sets wouldn't exist if it wasn't for wikipedia.

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  2. Some blogger (Night owl?) noticed that about the revolving door card. It was either wikipedia or the first thing to come up if you did a google search on "revolving door".

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  3. Yeah, I've noticed this for just about any non-baseball insert they do - they use wikipedia or a google search.

    2011 Heritage News Flashbacks -
    Cuban Missile Crisis - wikipedia (first picture in the body of the text)
    Navy Seals activated - wikipedia (also first picture in the body of the text)
    Mariner 2 - wikipedia (photo in the summary at the top)

    In fairness - they probably are comfortable that they aren't infringing copyrights with those photos. It may be that more than laziness.

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  4. Excellent, thanks for posting this!

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