#death-mask

[thepersonalwords]

Why do we as humans always tend to remember the worse things about people? We may know someone for many years, know them as vibrant and healthy, yet when they fall ill and pass away, we can only picture them at their sickest, as though they were born and lived their whole lives wearing a death mask.

K. Martin Beckner, A Million Doorways

[silver-whistle]

En 1911, par un remarquable article publié dans les Annales révolutionnaires, puis largement diffusé sous forme de brochure, Hector Fleischmann croyait en finir avec la légende des masques mortuair...

A very good article on the problematic ‘death masks’ and the ‘facial reconstruction’ based on them. Tussaud’s narrative is highly dubious to say the least. Charlier’s claim that the portraits are all very flattering doesn’t stand up as an excuse in terms of the difference in features, and also we know some of the artists aren’t especially flattering (see Deseine’s Mirabeau and Gabrielle Danton portraits).

The main issues:

Politically, it was not in the Thermidorians’ interests to risk a martyr-cult, which creating an image of a physically mutilated young man would have done.

Practically, the remains were disposed of ASAP, and buried in quicklime (partly for political reasons, partly because it was the height of summer).

The so-called death-masks show no indication of the terrible bruising, facial œdema (bilateral, but more on the left, which was the injured side) and comminuted fracture of bone indicated by the surgeons who were poking about while the poor boy was still alive and pulled teeth and bits of bone out with their fingers.

Even if taken from a life-mask, it’s probably not him, because the facial proportions aren’t right, and what about the characteristic pointy little nose, which is consistent in all portraits? It looks to me like someone more middle-aged and of heavier build.

Tussaud makes things up. She’s a show-woman, an astute businesswoman, given her audience what they want. They want Robespierre? She’ll give them a Robespierre, even if it’s the life-mask of, say, one of her porters. She claims she took the mask from his head at the cemetery of the Madeleine: he was buried at Les Errancis. Her taste for post-Thermidorian myth-making is also clear in her claim that he had someone executed so he could give their house to his mistress…!  

[silver-whistle]

Hildegarde von Schlettstadt — Wikipédia

You're looking at an 11C lady. Yes, that's right. 11C.

I chanced on this while looking for material on death masks. In the Romanesque church of St Foy in Sélestat/Schlettstadt in Alsace in the 1890s, an 11C burial was uncovered – either the foundress Lady Hildegarde or her daughter Adelheid. Perhaps for reasons of infectious disease, she had been buried in quicklime, but it had set over her, making a mould from which a cast of her appearance could be made. The general opinion is now that she is probably Adelheid, as she died young, while Hildegarde reached old age. But it is extraordinary to think that she dates from the late 11C. The weave of her dress and part of her hairstyle are also imprinted.

[caveofhypnos-blog]

Outside, the wind has softly lifted the shroud from the death-mask of flowers on the windowpane. From the graves of beds grow the slender shoots of evergreens.

Antonín Bartušek, trans. Ewald Osers.