Our sense of Beethoven as the singular Romantic genius comes to us not only through his music, but also through the portraits of him done in his lifetime, and those which come after. Images of Beethoven based on these portraits have been reproduced ever since his lifetime and form a significant part of our understanding of him. But what do they represent? Are they really the artist? How have images of Beethoven been used to promote this most celebrated of composers? Through prints and portrait busts in the nineteenth century, to the movies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we explore Beethoven through images and objects and how he has been presented for cultural and political purposes.