Duchess Kate's portrait: Royally 'rotten'

Kate Middleton may have deemed it "absolutely brilliant," but the cyber consensus seems to be that the duchess's new portrait is absolutely blech.

"Straight from the 'Twilight' franchise," sniped Charlotte Higgins of Britain's The Guardian. "The first thing that strikes you about Middleton's visage as it looms from the sepulchral gloom of her first official portrait is the dead eyes: a vampiric, malevolent glare beneath heavy lids."

Over at The Independent, art critic Michael Glover was equally colorful: "The cheeks incline towards the hamsterish," calling the final result "catastrophic."

The Daily Mail's art critic, Robin Simon, was more direct: "Rotten."

Talking to The Independent, British art historian Ben Street was relatively circumspect in his assessment: "I don't think it is particularly successful. It's quite middle of the road. It has a very soft focus, '70s porn look, which isn't great." Uh, yeah.

Already, parody portraits are circulating, including a cartoonish kid's version and a mashup of "Mona Kate" (as Piers Morgan dubbed it) and that disfigured Spanish fresco of Jesus.