Europe's football stars Pirlo, Gerrard, Ronaldo and more immortalised as fine art portraits

12 August 2014 09:57

Sky are celebrating the launch of their new channel dedicated to European football, Sky Sports 5, with a series of portraits from art mimic John Myatt. The paintings depict some of the best footballing talent in Europe in the style of their country's most famous painters.

The unique project features Italian maestro Andrea Pirlo in the style of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Cristiano Ronaldo in the style of Columbano Bardalo Pinheiro's Portrait of Prefessor Antero de Quental and Steven Gerrard in the style of Joshua Reynolds' Portrait of General John Burgoyne.

Starting with the UEFA Super Cup, Sky Sports 5 will screen up to 600 live European football matches featuring some of the best players, the best teams and best competitions. New and existing Sky Sports customers can get the new channel Sky Sports 5 as part of their Sky Sports package, and as a further bonus they can also get two years’ free Sky Broadband Unlimited.

Gary Hughes, Sky Sports Head of Football, said: “For lots of people football is an art form and Sky Sports 5 will be the place to watch the skill, flair and vision of Europe’s finest players each and every week. We wanted to do something different to recognise the unique footballing artistry that will be on show and felt John’s work would perfectly capture the spirit of the channel and the beautiful game.”

John Myatt said: “I’ve spent my professional life recreating the work of some of the world’s finest artists, so I was delighted to partner with Sky on this project, to depict five of Sky Sports 5’s most talented footballers. While I’ve recreated the likes of Picasso before, it was exciting to work on a new challenge and master another artist’s style such as Joshua Reynolds.

“Using such iconic faces as the basis for my portraits was great fun –we are used to seeing talents like Gerrard and Ronaldo on our TV screens but we’ve never seen them quite like this before.”

The paintings will be on display at Castle Fine Art gallery in Mayfair from Tuesday 12th August to Friday 12th September. Entrance is free.

The introduction of Sky Sports 5 increases the Sky Sports offering to seven channels and will be the home of European Qualifiers for UEFA EURO 2016, UEFA Champions League, La Liga, Coppa Italia and Copa del Rey for Sky Sports viewers, plus a host of other European football programming including Revista de la Liga and UEFA Champions League Weekly.

Source: DSG