The Vilna Gaon’s Portrait: The True Story Behind the Myth

The great Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna — known as the Vilna Gaon or simply the Gra, was recognized during his lifetime as one of the towering geniuses of the Jewish world. From a young age, tales of his brilliance and saintliness spread throughout Lithuania and Poland, and it is no surprise that many wished to have his portrait displayed in their homes.

After his passing, this fascination only deepened. Opportunistic merchants quickly realized the demand and began distributing portraits said to depict the Gaon. Today, there are around twelve different images that claim to show the face of the Vilna Gaon — almost all of them imaginary and without historical basis.

The Famous but False Portrait

The most widely circulated portrait shows the Gaon wrapped in a tallit and tefillin, holding a book in one hand and a quill in the other, as if in the midst of writing his Torah insights. To make it appear authentic, the image was inscribed with the following words: 

“This is a true and accurate picture, produced with great effort through the involvement of the noble lady Mrs. Miriam of Antova, granddaughter of the Gaon, and preserved in the home of the Vilner family, his descendants.”

Despite this impressive claim, historians and art experts agree that this image is completely inauthentic — neither true nor original.

The Real Origin of the Image

During the Gaon’s lifetime, only one sketch was ever circulated, and it was blurry and indistinct. It showed him with a very long beard, but without tallit or tefillin.

More than twenty years after his death, in 1820, a Polish painter named Józef Głowacki created an oil painting depicting the Gaon in elegant rabbinic attire, wearing a tall, ornate rabbinic hat, his beard neatly trimmed and squared, and without side curls (pe’ot). In his left hand he holds a book; in his right, a quill pen.

This portrait was commissioned by a Jewish patron and then sold and distributed widely. However, it was entirely imaginary, painted long after the Gaon’s passing, and based on no firsthand description.

How the Modern “Tallit and Tefillin” Image Was Born

Roughly fifty years later, a lesser artist crudely copied Głowacki’s painting, making several changes: he added tefillin and a tallit, draping them over the original elegant rabbinic garments, and replaced the complicated hat with an oversized kippah that was easier to draw.

This altered version — based on a non-Jewish painter’s imagination and modified decades later, became the most popular and iconic image of the Vilna Gaon, reproduced in countless books and homes.

The Conclusion: No Authentic Portrait

In truth, no genuine, authoritative portrait of the Vilna Gaon exists.
We have no visual record of his face, only words describing his greatness, intellect, and holiness.

The images that circulate today reflect not his actual appearance but the awe and reverence generations have felt for him — an attempt to capture through art the spiritual light of a man whose wisdom illuminated the Jewish world.