Bust of Cristiano Ronaldo

In March 2017, a bronze bust by sculptor Emanuel Santos depicting Portuguese professional footballer Cristiano Ronaldo was unveiled at the newly renamed Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport on the Portuguese island of Madeira. The unveiling ceremony was attended by Portugal's president and the prime minister. Santos said the bust took 15 days to complete and was "not as simple as it seems" to create.<ref nameBBC/> The sculpture will remain on permanent display outside the airport's terminal entrance.<ref nameBBC/>
Reception
Rich McCormick of The Verge wrote, "The finished product makes the famously handsome man into something of a monster, squaring his head, shrinking his eyes, and inflating his bones to horrific levels. It looks like someone having a bad reaction to hair dye, or like the Goonies' Sloth after some partially successful plastic surgery, and as is to be expected in these situations, the internet went wild."<ref name=McCormick/> McCormick also noted the many photoshopped parodies that appeared online, depicting Ronaldo as "Batman's Two-Face, Mass Effect's eerily animated main character, Han Solo frozen in carbonite, BioShock's Andrew Ryan, and as IT, the monster hiding in the sewers. Others went the other way, mapping the unheimlich contours of the bust's face onto the real man's real face, making his head lumpen and his eyes scream 'kill me.<ref nameMcCormick/> The sculpture has also been said to depict Irish former professional footballer and businessman Niall Quinn.<ref nameBBC/>
 
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