Undying Faces ®

Wikipedia Entry for Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

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.

Death mask (2 copies), from the original by D. Brucciani. See Hutton, Portraits…, pp. 86-92; Moore, Talks…, p. 207. [Boxes 50, 62]

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.

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.

Learn:  Wikipedia entry for Felix Mendelssohn

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 FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY was born in Hamburg on February 3, 1809, and died on November 4, 1847, at Leipzig, the famous centre of his labours. The death mask was taken by his friends, the artists Hiibner and Bendemann. The specimen that we have reproduced is probably the first cast, for the dead man’s hairs are still adhering to the beard; it is in the possession of Dr. Eduard von Bendemann of Berlin-Friedenau, a grandson of the Diisseldorf painter Eduard von Bendemann, from whom the family inherited it. There is a second specimen in the hands of Mendelssohn’s granddaughter. Miss Marie Wach, in Leipzig, the daughter of Wach, the great professor of civil law who was Mendelssohn’s son-in-law.

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.

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.

 Learn: Wikipedia entry for Duke of Reichstadt - Napoleon II of France

THE DUKE OF REICHSTADT.–”Remember that I would rather know my son to lie in the Seine than to be in the hands  of the-enemies of France. The fate of Astyanax, captured by the Greeks, has always seemed to me the saddest in history.” (Napoleon to Joseph Bonaparte, March 16, 1814.) And yet this was precisely the fate of the great Emperor’s only son, nor did he even enjoy the privilege of living among the Greeks. Napoleon Francois Joseph Charles first saw the light on March 20, 1811, in the Tuileries; even in the cradle he received the title of King of Rome. In 1814 the unhappy child was living in the castle of Schonbrunn bearing the title of Prince of Parma; from 1818 onwards every effort was made to educate this sole legitimate heir to the French imperial throne as ” the chief private person under the monarchy, with the exception of the Archdukes”, and he was made Duke of Reichstadt. On July 22, 182 2, a merciful Providence saved this piteous victim of Metternich’s policy from an even more discordant fate than he had yet experienced in his short life. The Viennese sculptor Franz Klein, whom we have already met as the maker of Beethoven’s life mask, had received permission to take the death mask of Napoleon II. Four specimens are known to exist: one, which we reproduce here, in the Musee Carnavalet, a second in possession of Prince Victor Napoleon, a third in the Musee Lorrain at Nancy, and a fourth in the Municipal Museum of Baden, near Vienna. (Edouard Wertheimer: Der Her nog von Reichstadf, Stuttgart, 1912.) 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.

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.

Death Mask

Life Mask

Death Mask After Autopsy

Learn: Wikipedia entry for Ludwig Van Beethoven

Learn: Notes on mask from “Portraits in Plaster” at Google Books

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More Info: Life Mask - Laurence Hutton Collection

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LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, born on December 17, 1770, at Bonn on the Rhine, died March 26, 1827, in Vienna. On March 27, one day, that is, after the decease of the great master, a post-mortem was held by the Viennese anatomist, Dr. Johann Wagner, Rokitansky’s predecessor in office; special attention was paid to the organs of hearing. In order to do this it was impossible to avoid cutting through the skull at ‘the glanoid cavities of the lower jaw, whereby the lower half of the face was deprived of its original support. The following passage from a letter of Stephen von Breuning to Schindler shows that the death mask was not taken till March 28, that is, a day after the post-mortem on the skull: “To-morrow morning a certain Danhauser wants to take a plaster cast from the body; he will be finished in five minutes, or eight at most. Write to me to say Yes or No, whether I am to consent. Such casts of great men are often permitted, and if we forbade it our refusal might afterwards be regarded as an encroachment upon the rights of the public. Vienna, March 27, 1827. Breuning.” Because of this sequence of events the mask portrays the distortion of Beethoven’s features resulting from the preceding postmortem. But in any event the master’s appearance had changed greatly during the four months of agonizing pain which preceded his death. Ferdinand Rausch, in a letter to Moscheles of March 17, 1827, describes the dying Beethoven as follows: “I found poor Beethoven in the most pitiful condition, more like a skeleton than a living man”. Only the upper part of the face, especially the forehead and nose, is of some value in considering its formation as the head of a genius. We realize fully the startling change in Beethoven’s face (per- haps due to his illness) when we compare the well-known life mask, of which casts arc everywhere to be seen. This life mask was taken from Beethoven’s face in Teplitz in 1812, that is, fifteen years before his death, by the sculptor Franz Klein as an aid in modeling his Beethoven bust; the contour of the profile is entirely different from that of the death mask. {Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, Vienna, 1909, vol. xxxix. p. 272; Th.von Frimmel: Beethovenstudien, Munich, 1905, vol. i. pp. 42 and 149 ff.; Waldemar Schweisheimer: Beethovens Leiden, Munich, 1922, passim; Orlik: Kleine Aufsdt^e, Berlin, 1924, p. 14; Stephan Ley: Beethoven, Berlin, 1925, p. 144.) Josef Danhauser (born 1805, died 1845), the maker of the death mask, was a painter celebrated at a later date as the principal representative of the bourgeois genre school in pre-revolutionary Vienna. There is also a lithograph by him of Beethoven’s head as he lay on the bier. (Compare Th. v. Frimmel: Josef Danhauser und Beethoven, Vienna, 1892, pp. 10 and 14.) I have unfortunately failed to discover anything further about the subsequent fate of the death mask. In 1870 it was presented to the Bonn University library on the occasion of the Beethoven centenary. There it was discovered by Professor Schaafhausen in a corner of the library covered with dust. Since then it has been transferred to the Beethovenhaus in Bonn. [Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespearegesellschaft, 1875, loth year, p. 45.) Photograph by H. Rose, Bonn on the Rhine

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.

Learn: Wikipedia entry for Napoleon I of France

Learn: Notes on mask from “Portraits in Plaster” at Google Books

Learn: Notes on mask from “Talks in a Library…” at Google Books

More Info: Life Mask - Laurence Hutton Collection

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NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, born on August 15, 1769, at Ajaccio; died on May 5, 1821, at St. Helena. When we enumerate all the tortures and sufferings that Napoleon had to undergo and endure at Longwood for five and a half long years from October 16, 1815, we must not forget that the sufferer had not even a friendly and conscientious physician beside him in his last dying distress and agony. Dr. F. Antomarchi, a Gorsican by birth, physician at the Spedale di S. Maria nuova in Florence, Vice-Chancellor of Pisa University, went from Rome to London on the recommendation of Cardinal Fesch and Madame Mere, and thence, as Napoleon’s future physician in ordinary, he set sail for St. Helena, arriving on September 18, 1819. Although Antomarchi made careful entries in his St. Helena diary (published in 1825) regarding his treatment of Napoleon and described his relation with the great Emperor as friendly, his words are not wholly in accordance with the facts. We know from the statements of the devoted Count Montholon that up to a few months before his death Antomarchi believed Napoleon’s illness (cancer of the liver) to have been feigned; nor did he in a general way carry out his important duties with an adequate sense of responsibility. Thus he was often in Jamestown amusing himself with the officers of the English garrison when his illustrious patient had need of him. On the very day of Napoleon’s death Antomarchi took the death mask of the great Emperor after his head had been shaved, for his hair was to be sent to members of his family as a memento. As we gaze at the mask we involuntarily call Heine’s words to mind: “Napoleon was not of the stuff that kings are made of– he was of the marble from which gods are hewn”. The mask remained for the time being in Antomarchi’s possession, and is now in the Musee de 1′armee in Paris, together with other relics of Napoleon. The Musee Carnavalet has a bronze cast of the mask. Napoleon’s body, as is generally known, was transferred from St. Helena to Paris in 1840, and buried on December 15 under the dome of the Invalides. 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.