Undying Faces ®

HENRI II. DE VALOIS, second son of King Francois I., born on March 31, 1518, at St. Germain-sur-Laye, married Catherine de’ Medici in 1533, and became king of France himself in 1547; as described in the Introduction, he was the victim of an accident at a tournament in 1559.

The contemporary record of payment for this king’s death mask is given in an article byJ.J. Guiffrey: Jean Perreal et Francois Clouet. Mouvelles archives de I’art francais, Paris, 1879; it is incompletely quoted in a book which is important for our subject in other respects: Louis Courajod: Alexandre Lenoir, son journal et Ie musee des monuments francais, Paris, 1887, vol. iii. p. 442. I have no intention of reproducing this lengthy document; what is specially important to us in it is the express mention of the fact that the death mask was taken and moulds made of Henry II.’s hands, together with details about the making of the effigies.

The death mask itself is now in the Louvre in Paris; it came from the Magasins des chantiers of St. Denis, that is, approximately, cathedral building works; it is made of terra-cotta, 21 centimetres in height, and is damaged and disfigured on the nose, the lower lip, and the lower part of the beard. (Catalogue des sculptures du Louvre, Paris, 1922, Part I. p. 41.)

The material itself leaves no doubt but that we are dealing with a retouched cast from the actual death mask, especially since we know that the king’s right eye was pierced when he met with the accident in the tournament; it requires the closest observation to detect anything of this in the terra-cotta mask, for the right eye has been far more deliberately retouched than the left, though otherwise the signs of agonised pain have been pitilessly retained. The terra-cotta copy of the death mask served the famous sculptor Gcrmain Pilon as a model for his monument on Henri II.’s tombstone in St. Denis, of which the Louvre has a valuable terra-cotta bowtto in the above-mentioned section (No. 415).

It is worth while to learn how this mask found its way to the Louvre. On August i, 1793, the French National Convention issued the following decree:

“The tombs and mausoleums of former kings in the church of St. Denis, in the temples, and in other places throughout the Republic, shall be destroyed on August loth next.”

The municipal administration of St. Denis, more papal than the Pope himself, did not even wait for the appointed date, but between August 6 and 8 handed over the church where the French kings were buried to the fanatical mob. The fury of the revolutionary masses wreaked itself blindly on the priceless historical symbols of monarchical France; they shattered and wrecked the monuments and piled up the broken remnants in the open market-place as a trophy of their achievement; they even desecrated the kings’ bodies, dragging them from their tombs and leaving them lying about in the streets. An eye-witness has thus described what was done: “I have seen a most extraordinary spectacle: I have passed in review all the kings of the royal line. Though they were disfigured, it was very piquant”. (L. Courajod (see above), Paris, 1878, vol. i. pp. xix and Ixxxvii ft., with notes.)

It is to the undying honour of Alexandre Lenoir and his collaborator Citoyen Scellier that they saved what could be saved from the debris of St. Denis; he transported his treasures to the storehouse in the monastery of the Petite Augustine in Paris, whither he had already brought countless wrecks of precious works of art in bronze, stone, and wood, paintings and products of craftsmanship, during the stormy period from 1792 to 1794. From the Petits Augustins the death mask was taken to the storehouse at St. Denis, probably at the time of the restoration in 1816, and there it was discovered by Louis Courajod in 1882 and transferred to the Louvre.

For a description of the funeral ceremonies of French kings and queens, see Du Tillet, Receuil des Roys de France, Paris, 1607; Andre du Chesne: Les Antiquitez et recherches de la grandeur et maiete des Roys de France, Paris, 1609; Theodore Godefroy: Ceremonial de France, Paris, 1619; Laborde: La Renaissance des arts a la Cow de France, Paris, 1850; P. Viollet: Jehan Foucquet, Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1867, vol. ii. p. 101; Prost: Documents sur l’histoire des arts en France. Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1887, pp. 327 ff.; J. v. Schlosser: Geschichte der Portratbildnerei in Wachs. Jahrbuch d. allerh. Kaiserhauses, Vienna, 1910. Photograph by Giraudon, Paris.

Black & White Photos and quotations from: Benkard, Ernst, & Green, Margaret (1927). Undying Faces, A Collection of Death Masks. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

LORENZO DE’ MEDICI, CALLED IL MAGNIFICO. - “Nature endowed him with strength, not beauty. He was above middle height, broad in the chest and shoulders, powerfully built and supple of limb. His features were ugly, his face weak, his nose flat, his chin square, his complexion dull. He had no sense of smell and his voice was harsh” (Alfred von Reumont, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Leipzig, 1874, vol. i. p. 197, taken from the character study in Angelo Fabronio’s Laurentii Medicis Magnifici Vita, Pisis, 1784). Goethe, in his Life of Benvenuto Cellini, speaks of Lorenzo as “einen burgerlichen Helden”, and his words probably hit upon the distinctive quality of this man of might. For Lorenzo invariably used all the power at his command for the sole purpose of maintaining peace and prosperity in Italy; his love of poetry, art, and the sciences was as genuine and profound as his detestation of warfare and the destructive trade of arms.

Concerning Lorenzo’s last days and death we have the report of Angelo Poliziano, an eye-witness, who was certainly intimate enough with him. Thus we can participate in the events at the beginning of April 1492, in the Villa Careggi near Florence beside the death-bed of the illustrious prince; we are told in detail how the body was taken from Careggi to the cloister of San Marco and was quietly laid to rest in the sacristy of San Lorenzo: but nowhere is there the slightest hint to suggest that a mask was taken from the face of the illustrious dead. (Angelo Fabronio (see above), vol. i. pp. 199 ft., and Reumont (see above), vol. ii. p. 661.)

This death mask did not serve for the production of an effigies, although Lorenzo was of princely rank. I am convinced that it, too, was designed as a model of the utmost accuracy for later portraits, and especially for busts. I have been led to form this opinion especially by a terra-cotta bust of II Magnifico in the Fortnum Collection in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which was certainly modelled with the aid of the death mask, as is generally admitted.

The death mask itself first appears in literature, as far as I can ascertain, in Trifon Trapesnikoff’s Die Portratdarstellungen der Mediceer des i ^ten Jahrhunderts (Strasbourg, 1909, pp. 51 ft.); to that scholar I owe the information that the mask is gilded and is preserved by the Societa Colombaria in Florence. This Societa still exists as a learned association devoted to antiquarian, historical, and archaeological objects. It was founded on May 15, 1735, as a kind of local Academy, by Giov. Girolamo Pazzi in collaboration with like-minded friends; it received its name from the many steps that its members had to ascend in the Palazzo Pazzi, so that they were compared with pigeons flying up to their pigeon-cote. It has been impossible to ascertain when Lorenzo Medici’s mask came into possession of the Society. (Bindo Simone Peruzzi, Notice dell’ origine et dell’ istituto della Societa Colombaria, Florence, 1747.)

Black & White Photos and quotations from: Benkard, Ernst, & Green, Margaret (1927). Undying Faces, A Collection of Death Masks. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

ST. ANTONINUS.–Antonio Pierozzi, generally called Antonino on account of his slender figure, was born at Florence in 1389, the son of a notary. Rejoined the Dominican fraternity in his native town in 1405, at the age of sixteen, and rose fairly rapidly to the dignity of Prior. Later he became Vicar-General of the Province of Tuscany, and the example of his determined asceticism exercised a reforming influence throughout the whole Order, so that he is regarded as the leader of those who observed strictly the rule of the blessed Johannes Dominicus. He was utterly unassuming in all matters concerning his own person, and a living example of the Imitation of Christ. He actually refused the call of Pope Eugene IV. to accept the office of Archbishop of Florence and submitted only when he was threatened with excommunication (1446). Even in the midst of his new dignities, he continued to regard the love of his fellows as the first of the virtues. During the famine and plague in Florence in 1448 and after the disastrous earthquake of 1453 he proved himself a true saint and the friend and father of those in sickness or distress. In order to portray with some completeness the character of this spiritual and selfless man, we must add that he was also a theological writer of high merit, whose works still retain their value. Without the influence of St. Anthony, it is impossible to conceive such an historical figure as Savanarola.

When he died in 1459 Pope Pius II. Piccolomini was in Florence and took part in his Archbishop’s funeral ceremony. So detailed an account of the ceremony has come down to us that we are able to trace the connection of the death mask with it. But a similar problem arises as in the case of St. Bernardino da Siena. St. Anthony, too–he was canonised, by the way, by Pope Hadrian VI. in 1523–lay in state in San Marco for a week, and we cannot be sure whether it was his embalmed body, with the entrails removed, to which the throng of the faithful paid homage, or an effigies. In the latter case, there would be no difficulty in explaining why the death mask is still kept in the convent of San Marco; but we may regard the taking of the mask as a tribute to the sentiment of personality awakening in the Quattrocento. (Joh. Bollandi et Godefridi Henschenii: Acta Sanctorum, Antwerp, 1680, vol. i. pp. 310 fF. See under May 2.)

Black & White Photos and quotations from: Benkard, Ernst, & Green, Margaret (1927). Undying Faces, A Collection of Death Masks. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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Mask located in the Duomo Museum, Florence, Italy

FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI, the pioneer architect of the early Italian Renaissance, the master who created the cupola of the cathedral at Florence, was born in that city in 1377 and died there on April 15, 1446. It is a proof of the exceptional honour and esteem in which the artist was already held amongst his contemporaries that the Opera del Duomo proposed that he should be buried in S. Maria del Fiore, and placed marble for the monument at the disposal of his adopted son and heir, the sculptor Cavalcanti, free of charge. Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti, usually called Buggiano after his birthplace (1412-1462), erected the tomb with the well-known bust in relief in memory of his great foster-father in 1447 on the wall of the right aisle of the cathedral at Florence. The relief was modelled after the master’s death mask, taken by Cavalcanti. In this case, therefore, the death mask was demonstrably intended as a technical aid to an artist who had no undue confidence in his unaided skill. The original is in the Museum of S. Maria del Fiore, the so-called Opera del Duomo. (Giorgio Vasari: Le Vite, etc., edited by Guglieimo della Valle, Siena, 1791, vol. iii. pp. 129 ft. No mention of the death mask; Cornel von Fabriczy: Filippo Brunelleschi, Stuttgart, 1892, pp. 308-309 and 404; Thieme and Becker: Allg. Lexikon der bildenden Kunstler, Leipzig, 1912, vol. vi. p. 213.) Photograph by Brogi.

Black & White Photos and quotations from: Benkard, Ernst, & Green, Margaret (1927). Undying Faces, A Collection of Death Masks. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

BERNARDINO DA SIENA, born at Massa-Marittima on September 8, 1380 (that is, the year of the death of St. Catherine of Siena) died on one of his missionary journeys on May 20, 1444, in the Franciscan monastery at Aquila in the Abruzzi.

Bernardino, of the old knightly family of the Albizecchi, in 1402 joined the Franciscan Order in Siena. He himself was strict in his observance of the rule; preaching peace and love and simplicity of life, he was the most popular and influential orator of Italy in the first half of the Quattrocento. In a sense he resembles Fra Angelico, and if we wish to have a complete picture of the early fifteenth century we must not overlook his presence in the humanist and Renaissance culture of Florence, just awakening in 1402 in the famous competition for the second door of the baptistry. His Latin sermons are a model of ecclesiastical eloquence, his sermons in the popular tongue are spiced with refreshingly blunt home truths, but are likewise irradiated with a gentle worldly wisdom, so that even to-day we can understand their direct and immense influence. The holy man invariably refused higher ecclesiastical honours. The sign of Jesus, I.H.S., created by him, was adopted later by the Jesuits.

Bernardino was canonised by Nicholas V. as early as 1450, and we have a detailed description of his funeral by an eye-witness. For our purpose it is especially interesting to learn that Bernardino’s corpse lay in state for twenty-six days in the cathedral at Aquila before it was committed to the earth. As this was in southern Italy in the month of May, we may perhaps assume that the body so exhibited was an effigy.

Such an assumption would explain without difficulty the existence and purpose of the wax mask, especially as it has found its way from the monastery where the saint ended his earthly course to the Provincial Museum at Aquila. The mask is astonishingly well preserved.

But it should be observed that it was also used as a model forstatues of the saint; the most characteristic of these statues, a terra-cotta full-face figure, the work ofNiccolo dell’ Area (about 1450), is in the private collection of Ruggero Schiff-Giorgini in Rome. (Casimir von Chledowsky: Siena, Berlin, 1923, vol. ii. pp. 108 ft.; Max Kirchstein: Siena, Munich, 1923, p. 456; Piero Misciatelli: La Maschera di S. Bernardino da Siena. Rassegna d’ Arte senese, Anno XVIII, 1925, fascicoli i.-ii.) The photographs are the gift of Baron G. B. Manieri, Director of the Museum at Aquila.

Black & White Photos and quotations from: Benkard, Ernst, & Green, Margaret (1927). Undying Faces, A Collection of Death Masks. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.