Emanuel Santos

The original really is a better sculpture. It’s an ecstatic mess, its face a hybrid of Ronaldo and Santos’s, two sets of features squidged together. It’s the artist seeing something of himself in the rags-to-riches glory of Ronaldo. It’s feverish, intense; the work of someone driven obsessively. The new version is someone forced into a do-over to save face. Whereas the eyes of the original bust seem pointed in a thousand directions – joyful, unfocused and giddy – the eyes of the new one look to a faraway point. They are lost, cold, sullen. This is a dead sculpture, an acceptance of defeat in the face of public outcry. And it will be immediately forgotten.

In June 2018, the first bust was removed from display at the airport and replaced with a bust of Ronaldo by a Spanish sculptor.

In 2018, Bleacher Report commissioned Santos to create a "more traditional interpretation" bust of Ronaldo with a "more serious" demeanor. The original sculpture will continue to be displayed at Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport. Santos has said the reception his first bust received had a negative impact on him and his family. He completed work on the sculpture in March. Santos' reaction to seeing the bust for the first time was released by Bleacher Report, on the one year anniversary of the original sculpture's unveiling.

Santos is married with one son and lives in Caniçal, the principal cargo port of Madeira. He works part-time at Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport. In 2017, Santos became leader of Caniçal Parish Council, when his centre-left PS party won the local election.

Santos has created two busts of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, one in 2017 and another in 2018.

Santos has created two bronze sculptures depicting Ronaldo. The first was unveiled at the newly renamed Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport on the Portuguese island of Madeira on March 29, 2017. The renaming ceremony was attended by Ronaldo, the nation's president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the prime minister, António Costa, among other guests and hundreds of fans. The sculpture received a strong reaction from news outlets and on social media following its unveiling, with most commenting on the work's lack of resemblance to Ronaldo, and was intended to be on permanent display outside the airport's terminal entrance. In 2018, Bleacher Report commissioned Santos to create a second bust of Ronaldo. The original sculpture was to continue to be displayed at the airport.

The sculpture was unveiled by Ronaldo on March 29, 2017, as part of an official ceremony to rename Maderia Airport to Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport. The reportedly "bizarre" and "eccentric" event was also attended by the nation's president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and prime minister, António Costa, who unveiled a commemorative plaque together, as well as dozens of other guests and hundreds of fans. It was intended to remain on permanent display outside the airport's terminal entrance.

In 2017, the Irish bookmaker Paddy Power commissioned Santos to make a bust of Ronaldo's then team-mate, the Welsh footballer Gareth Bale. The bust was unveiled in Cardiff before the 2017 UEFA Champions League Final at the city's Millennium Stadium. The bust is worth approximately £25,000 and weighs 40kg. It was made in Porto, Portugal, and took 264 hours to create.

In 2016, Santos created a monument to fishermen in the port of Caniçal, Maderia. The life-size sculpture depicts two fishermen in a small boat, and is sited on a roundabout on the seafront.

Claire McCartney of the magazine Paper wrote, "despite Ronaldo's world-renowned beauty and famously symmetrical face, the statue Portugal created of him was...questionable. I mean, truly, the stuff of nightmares. Perhaps the sculptor was drunk, or high, or even a little bit jealous and decided to mold Ronaldo's face into swirly obscurity. No matter the reason, the result is horrifying." People magazine's Brianne Tracy said the work "looks nothing like" Ronaldo and used word play to describe the sculpture as "well, a bust". Raisa Bruner of Time magazine said the sculpture is "bizarre", "questionable", and generated "plenty of jokes, memes, and head-shaking". USA Today's Charles Curtis also used a pun to describe the artwork as "a bust". He called the sculpture "pretty creepy" and compared the depiction of Ronaldo to the courtroom sketch of Tom Brady, which received a similar reaction in 2015.

Emanuel Jorge Da Silva Santos (born 20 November 1976) is an artist from Madeira, Portugal. In 2017 he became famous for a sculpture of the Madeira footballer Cristiano Ronaldo which was widely derided in media articles. The English newspaper The Guardian commented Suddenly, this sculptor was the most famous artist in the world.