Undying Faces ®

This mask if from Madame Tussaud.  There is no evidence that Madame Tussaud was present at her execution or that his is indeed the face of Marie Antoinette.  Please let me know if you have further information on this mask.

See:

http://www.blastmilk.com/decollete/guillotine-the-french-kiss/marie-antoinette-crown-without.php

Picture from the National Portrait Gallery Death MaskInfo: Wikipedia Entry for Samuel Johnson

Life mask, from the original Houdon statue, 1785. See Hutton, Portraits…, pp. 202-3. [Box 53]

Death Mask

Death Mask

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

JoHANN CHRISTIAN SENCKENBERG was a medical practitioner in his native town of Frankfort-on-the-Main from1732 onwards. He was born on February 28,1707, but it was not till 1737 that he took his medical doctor’s degree at the University of Gottingen. He then became for a short time physician in ordinary to the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg in Tournay, from 1739 to 1740. In 1740 he settled in Frankfort. Posterity remembers him for the famous endowment (1763) by wliicli a single citizen’s fortune placed at the disposal of the Free Imperial City the means to found and maintain an anatomical school, a chemical laboratory, a botanical garden, a natural science museum, a technical library, and a hospital. It is probably an unique example in German history of far-seeing public spirit in a citizen, and it served as a model and stimulus tojohann Friedrich Stadel (1817) in his much later endowment. If we overlook a dash of personal vanity that is all too human, Senckenbcrg’s action sprang in a general way from such loftier motives as, pre-eminently, love of his kind and enlightened intelligence. Senckenberg died a violent death. About four o’clock on Sunday afternoon, November 15, he climbed on the scaffolding of his city hospital, which was in course of construction; he either stumbled or was seized with sudden giddiness, and fell with such disastrous results that he died the same evening without recovering consciousness. A post-mortem was held on November 17– an official report is contained in the Frankfort city archives– and on November 18 he was buried in a piece of ground near the Eschenheim Gate left as part of his bequest, in a vault built bv the legator himself. It is doubtless well known how important Dr. Senckcnberg’s Trust has become, not only for the general

intellectual life of Frankfort, but for the very existence of Frankfort University. With all his magnanimity of spirit, Senckenberg the man was not without a strange and sometimes scurrilous trait. Thus in 1764, that is eight years before his death, he began to write down the minutest directions for his own funeral and the disposal of his body. These directions, written, moreover, in an almost illegible hand (in the Frankfort city archives) arc instructive for the study of our subject, particularly Senckenberg’s eager efforts to procure the Senate’s permission to be buried in his own Botanical Garden. His thoughts and feelings are akin to those expressed in Frederick the Great’s last will, and afford a second example of what we called in the introduction the mood of a nature-lover almost akin to Werther. But so far as I can ascertain, Senckenberg’s directions give no indication that he had a death mask in mind. The mask was taken on November 16 by Christian Benjamin Rauschner (1725-1793), a modeller and stuccoer resident in Frankfort, in order to model from it the large waxen image of Senckenberg that is still to be seen in the Frankfort municipal hospital. The mask, therefore, was simply an aid to the production of the figure. It is itself kept in the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfort. (G. L. Kriegk: Die Brilder Senckenberg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1869; Friedrich Gwinner; Kunst und Kiinstler in Frankfurt, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1862, p. 328; Ernst Roediger: Die Portratsammlung der Dr. Sewkenbergischen Stiftwg. Berichte der Senckenbergischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1898, p. 126.)

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.

FRANCESCO LoREDANO. — Our information concerning the ceremonial customary in Venice on the death of a Doge (or Dogaressa) is of comparatively late date, from the early seventeenth century. We know with certainty that on the day after his death the Doge’s body was exhibited in the stanza delle udienze, but was conveyed the very next day to the church selected for the funeral. On the other hand, the custom long persisted of displaying a waxen figure of the deceased in all his robes of state and wearing the full insignia of his office, laid upon a bier in the sola del piovego, the very room in which he had received the first congratulations on his accession. The lying-in-state usually continued for three days, after which the statua was borne in solemn procession across the Square of San Marco to San Giovanni e Paolo before the obsequies began in its presence. The question is still unsolved how far this cult is connected with French and English rites — whether the court customs of those countries were borrowed and incorporated in the ceremonial of the Serenissima, or whether in all three cases the traditions of Roman antiquity were the original source, and no one in Venice knew what was the habitual practice in Paris and London. Curiously enough, very few masks of Doges have been preserved, and all are ex-clusively from the eighteenth century. Francesco Loredano was the scion of an ancient and illustrious patrician family which had on several occasions given the Republic its chief; he was elected Doge on March 18, 1752—the 116th in the succession–and died in 1762; there is nothing of historical importance to relate of his official activities. The Doge’s death mask is in the Museo Civico Correr in Venice. (Pompeo Molmenti: La Storia di Veneya nella vita privata, Bergamo, 1906, vol. ii. p. 566.)

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.

JONATHAN SWIFT was born in Dublin on November 30, 1667, and died there on October 19, 1745; during the last five years of his life his mind was completely overcast. The death mask (compare the Note on Newton) was taken as a model from which the sculptor Roubillac was to make a bust of Swift in London for Dublin University. The original mask was formerly in Trinity College Museum, Dublin, but early in the eighteen-forties it was broken in two by clumsy handling. Our plate was made from an old (probably the only) cast in the Hutton Collection in Princeton University library, N.J. The soft, blurred appearance of the plate shows how important it is to reproduce from the earliest cast of a death mask, or one of the earliest. (W. R. Wilde: The Closing Tears of Dean Swiffs Life, Dublin, 1849.)

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.

FREDERICK WILLIAM I. OF PRUSSIA. — Concerning the death of this second king of Prussia we have the record of his great son’s words of filial reverence: “II mourut avec la fermete d’un philosophe ct la resignation d’un chretien. II conserva une presence d’esprit admirable jusqu’au dernier moment de sa vie, ordonnant de ses affaires en politique, examinant les progres de sa maladic en physicien et triomphant de la mort en heros.”The death mask is in the Hohenzollcrn Museum in Berlin. It is made of wax and measures 23 centimetres in length. (Daniel Fassmann: Leben und Taten des Allerdurchlauchtigsten und Gross-machtigsten Konigs von Preussen Friederici Wilhelmi, Franckfurth and Hamburg, 1741, vol. ii. p. 834.) Photograph by Gust. Schwartz, Berlin.

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.

ISAAC NEWTON. — “This great man envisaged and established the image of the universe presented to the modern world by natural science. He led us out of the mists of hypothetic speculations to a clear vision based upon empirical reasoning and mathematical calculations. Just as he had the courage to advocate the truths discovered by his researches and to stand up for them in the conflict of opinion, never shrinking from the labour involved, so as a politician and representative of Cambridge in Parliament he did not cling to outworn forms, and played an important part in the overthrow of the Stuart dynasty. Newton was born at Woolstrop in Lincolnshire on December 25, 1642, the year, that is, of Galileo’s death; his principal spheres of activity were Cambridge and the learned company of the Royal Society in London, of which he was President from 1703 till his death (March 31, 1727). After Roubillac’s death Newton’s death mask came into the hands of a London art dealer, from whom it was bought in 1839 by Professor Samuel Hunter Christie, secretary of the Royal Society, on behalf of the Society. It is still kept on their premises. There is a cast made from the mask in the Hutton Collection in the Princeton University library, N.J. Our reproduction was made in London by permission of the Royal Society. (William Huggins: The Royal Society, London, 1906, pp. 14 and 129.) Photograph by Millar & Harris, London.”

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.

News Article

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_cambridge/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=397715

PETER THE GREAT, the third child of the Tsar Alexis Romanov, was born on June 9, 1672. He drove his sister Sophia from the throne and at the age of seventeen seized the reins of government, ruling a people then altogether barbarous and Asiatic. When he died he left a well-organized empire remodeled on Western lines, stretching from Poland to China and from Sweden to Turkey; its inhabitants were trained in the arts of war and were no longer ignorant of the benefits of civilization; that empire has never since ceased to count as an important factor in the life of Europe. As a creative force and the inexorable schoolmaster of millions of slow-witted people, he is one of the most powerful embodiments of masculine genius, and has no equal in world history. He was an Oriental despot in the wide range of his volition and in his measureless excesses; yet a fervent patriot and capable of the utmost self-sacrifice when the accomplishment of his resolutely conceived plans was at stake. Peter’s death mask, following immediately after that of his chief adversary, Charles XII., offers a piquant contrast in physiognomy. Those who believe that the outward form reflects the inner expression may here compare and understand why Peter could not but emerge victorious from the historic duel. The death mask itself, a bronze cast from an original that has obviously been lost, was formerly in Peter’s Gallery in the Hermitage, and is now in the Academic Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in Leningrad. The Academy of Science there most readily allowed this first reproduction of the cast. It is difficult to decide whether Peter the Great’s death mask was designed for any purpose akin to the effigies. It is known that the Tsar had adopted the European funeral ceremonial in Russia; but it is not certain whether the effigies and the Corps were identical in the Salle funebre and later at the lying-in-state in the Apostle’s church of the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, as had been the case since Louis XIV., or whether, as in Prussia, a dummy of the dead man lay in the coffin in place of the real body. Only in the latter case would there be no difficulty in explaining the death mask. The problem can only be solved by a scholar able to study the Russian sources. (Voltaire: (Euvres completes, Gotha, 1785, vol. xxiv.; Description des Funnerailles de feu Vempereur Nicolas ler, St. Petersburg, 1856, pp. 30-57; Segur: Histoire de Russia et de Pierre Ie Grand, Paris, 1829.)

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.

CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN was born at Stockholm on June 27, 1682. He became king at the age of fifteen, and on May 8, 1700, he left his capital for his northern campaign, never to see it again in this life. At an age when ordinary men are in a state of half-conscious development he defeated his chief adversaries, the Danes, Peter the Great, and Augustus the Strong, driving the last-named from his throne as king of Poland; so overwhelming was his victory that between 1704 and 1707 he could regard himself as lord and arbiter of northern Europe. An unbridled imagination and fantastic megalomania led him into the error of a war in Russia and the Ukraine, where a shattering blow struck him and his army at Poltava. There the world power of Sweden descended to its grave, and there Russia was born as a Great Power. It only remains to tell the king’s personal fate, and that, indeed, reveals a character that will never fail to stir adventurous interest. After five years of exile and captivity in Turkey, he succeeded at last in reaching what was then the Swedish garrison town of Stralsund, on November 21, 1714, riding for sixteen perilous days through Hungary and right across Germany. His desperate flight from besieged Stralsund, his reappearance in Sweden, and his war against the Danes in Norway, were mere preliminaries to vaster and vaster enterprises, to which the passion for glory tempted this extraordinary man; but whilst he was inspecting the defenses of Frederickshald on December 11, 1718, an enemy bullet struck him and killed him on the spot. “Almost all his actions, including those of his simple and private life, were far beyond the bounds of probability. . . . He carried all the heroic virtues to a pitch of exaggeration at which they become as dangerous as the opposing vices. A unique rather than a great man, to be admired rather than imitated” (Voltaire). The king’s body was brought from the army headquarters at Tistedahlen to the Swedish city of Uddevalla, where it lay embalmed, awaiting the funeral ceremony. Here in Uddevalla the death mask is said to have been taken on December 13, but on an engraving of it by Angelica Clarke of the year 1823 the more probable statement appears that it was made four hours after the king’s death. The funeral ceremony did not take place till February 26, 1719, in Stockholm; the dead king was buried in the Rittersholm church, in the so-called Caroline choir of tombs, in a black marble sarcophagus covered with a gilded lion’s skin. There are several casts of the death mask itself; that belonging to the Military Association in Stockholm has probably the strongest claim to be regarded as the original. Our plate is from the cast in the British Museum (Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities), obtained from the collection of Henry Christy, who purchased it in Stockholm from the estate of the deceased Swedish sculptor Baestrom. On the right temple of the mask the mark is clearly visible where the fragment of case-shot penetrated the head and cut short the king’s life so suddenly. In considering the features it is not without importance to remember that Charles was not of the Vasa dynasty but belonged to the house of Pfalz-Zweibriicken. Voltaire, whose Histoire de Charles XII is still well known, remarked that the expression of the lower half of the face was disagreeable. (Charles XII. Was frequently cruel and despotic.) A third cast of (lie death mask, formerly in the University library at Cambridge, is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum there. (Voltaire: Histoire de Charles XII, Oiuvres***** de Voltaire, Gotha, 1785, vol. 23; G. A. Nordberg: Leben Karls XII., translated by I. H. Heubel, Hamburg, 1745-1751, vol. ii. pp. 750 ft.; A. Fryxell: Lebensbeschreibung Karls XII., freely translated by G. D. von Jensen-Tusch and L. Rohrdantz, Brunswick, 1861, Part V. pp. 239 ff.; Oskar II. of Sweden: Karl XII., Berlin, 1875; Laurence Hutton: A Collection of Death Masks, Harper’s new Monthly Magazine, November 1892, p. 907.) One more point may be mentioned. Rumours that Charles was the victim of an assassin from among his own men became current soon after his death and were never really silenced. King Charles XV. therefore had the sarcophagus in the Rittersholm church opened on August 31, 1859, and a careful examination made of the wound in Charles XI I.’s head; this proved once for all that the rumours were without foundation. The interesting protocol of this proceeding is contained in the last volume of Fryxell’s book on pp. 294-301. Photograph by messrs. Fleming, London.

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.