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Death Mask

Info:Wikipedia Entry for Wolf Tone

Location:  St Michan’s Church, Dublin Ireland

Death Mask of Dali used to settle claim of a woman to be his daughter

http://www.gulfnews.com/world/Other_World_Stories/10236577.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/2541988/Woman-seeks-DNA-testing-on-Salvador-Dalis-body-to-establish-she-is-his-daughter.html

Death Mask

AMONG THE CURIOSITIES held in the St Andrews University Museum is the death mask of Pedro de Luna (1328-1423), one of the Avignon antipopes, who styled himself Benedict XIII.

http://www.andrewcusack.com/blog/st_andrews/

Mask is in the Wellington Museum at Apsley House and the National Portrait Gallery.  Both in London 

National Portrait Gallery Link

Death Mask

From Apsley House Web Site

Wikipedia entry for Authur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Founder of the De Beers Diamond Company

Death Mask

From the National Museum of Southern Rhodesia.

See:  www.tokencoins.com/bbp.htm

Above photo from “The Pen and the Spindle” Blog:

http://penandspindle.blogspot.com/2008/06/missing-death-mask-of-cecil-rhodes.html

Wikipedia Entry for Cecil Rhodes

The death mask is now missing from the museum…

Death Mask

Mask located at The Drew University Methodist Collection, Madison New Jersey

Picture from:

http://wesley.nnu.edu/john_wesley/index.htm 

Wikipedia Entry For John Wesley

Death Mask

From the Rogers Historical Museum, Rogers Arkansas

http://www.rogersarkansas.com/Museum/donation/coinharveydeathmask.asp

Death Mask

From RoadSideAmerica.com - Death Mask in a Bread & Breakfast in East Liverpool, OH

See link here:

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10968

Pretty Boy Floyd’s Wikipedia entry

Death Mask

See this web page for photo and info

Learn: Wikipedia entry for William Wordsworth

More Info:  Life mask, from the original by B. R. Haydon. See below - Hutton, Portraits…, pp. 100-5; Moore, Talks…, pp. 176-7.

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Notes on mask from “Talks in a Library…”:

The “trying- to-look-pleasant” expression is peculiarly noticeable in the life masks of Wordsworth and of Keats; although the former did not altogether succeed, which was not the fault, by the way, of Charles Lamb. Haydon describes the operation in his Journal, under date of 1815, and says: “Wordsworth sat in my dressing-gown with his hands folded, sedate, solemn, and still, bearing it like a philosopher.” But elsewhere we read that the poet was placed flat on his back on the studio floor, while Lamb capered about him in glee at the undignified absurdity of the proceedings, trying to make the subject grin at his fantastic criticisms and remarks.

Sir Henry Taylor in his Autobiography spoke of attending Wordsworth’s funeral and of being shown then ”a cast of a mask of his face in which was a certain rough grandeur,” but he does not say when it was taken; nowhere did I find any reference to a death mask, and what Sir Henry saw and examined in 1850 was no doubt the work of Haydon, done thirty-five years before. It is more like the portraits of Wordsworth in his ripe middle-age than in his declining years.

Notes on mask from “Portraits in Plaster”:

Carlyle said that “Wordsworth’s face bore marks of much, not always peaceful, meditation; the look of it not bland or benevolent so much as close, impregnable, and hard.” S. C. Hall wrote that ” his eyes were mild and up-looking ; his mouth coarse rather than refined ; his forehead high rather than broad;” while Greville put it more tersely when he described him as “hard-featured, brown, wrinkled, with prominent teeth, and a few scattered gray hairs.” Leigh Hunt said, in his Autobiography: “Certainly I never beheld eyes that looked so inspired or supernatural [as Wordsworth’s]. They were like fires half burning, half smouldering, with a sort of acrid fixture of regard, and seated at the further end of two caverns. One might imagine Ezekiel or Isaiah to have had such eyes.”

Wordsworth reminded Hazlitt “of some of Holbein’s heads grave, saturnine, with a slight indication of sly humor, a peculiar sweetness in his smile.” Elsewhere Hazlitt spoke of his “intense high, narrow forehead, Eoman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose, and a convulsive inclination to laughter about his mouth, which was a good deal at variance with the solemn and stately expression of the rest of his face.” And Sir Humphry and Lady Davy, who were at Wordsworth’s funeral, were both struck by the likeness of his face, in the deep repose of death, to that of Dante. The expression, they thought, was much more feminine than it had been in life, and it suggested strongly the face of his devoted sister, with whom so many of his years had been spent.

Haydon, in his Journal, April 13, 1815, wrote ” I had a cast made yesterday of Wordsworth’s 104 PORTRAITS IN PLASTER face. He bore it like a philosopher. He sat in my dressing - gown with his hands folded; sedate, solemn, and still.” And then Haydon de- scribed how, through the open door, he exhibited the unconscious poet, undergoing this unbecoming operation, to curious but disrespectful friends of them both.

Another account of this performance shows us Wordsworth flat on his back on the studio floor, with Charles Lamb dancing about him, and making absurd remarks in order to force the poet to smile, and so spoil the mask. All of which was very characteristic of that “dear delightful,” “poor creature” who was despised by Carlyle, and who was naturally loved by every- body else. “What would we not give now for a mask of Lamb himself, dead or alive?

All this happened when Wordsworth was forty-two years of age, and thirty-five years before he died. Sir Henry Taylor in his Autobiography, spoke, shortly after the poet’s death, of “a cast taken of a mask of Wordsworth.” He considered it admirable as a likeness, and added that it was so regarded by Mrs. Wordsworth. He saw “a rough grandeur in it, with which, if it was to be converted into marble, posterity might be contented.” But he does not say whether it was a life -mask or a death-mask, and he does not refer to the Haydon mask as such. In no other work, in no biography of Wordsworth, and in no account of his last hours, is any allusion to the mask to be found. The face here reproduced is, without question, that of Wordsworth. It suggests the Wordsworth of middle age; it strongly resembles the portraits painted by Haydon; it is much too young in form and expression for the senile Wordsworth of the well-known Fraser Gallery; and there is little doubt of its being the work of Haydon alluded to above. Haydon is known to have painted several portraits of Wordsworth, one of which exhibits him in a Byron collar and another shows him with eyes rolling in fine frenzy over the composition of a sonnet on one of Hay don’s own pictures. Haydon also introduced Wordsworth as a devout disciple in his large work called “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem,” painted in 1818.

Death Mask

Death mask (2 copies?), reconstructed from the original by Vladimir Fortunato. See Museum Objects Information File. [Tower Room]

original death mask by Samuel Murray, assisted by Eakins. See Moore, Talks…, pp. 214-15, 223-4. [Scribner Room]

life mask, from the original by Clark Mills. See Hutton, Portraits…, pp. 253, 254; Moore, Talks…, pp. 167, 169-70 [Box 54]

Death Mask

death mask, from the original by Olaf Brenner. See Moore, Talks…, pp. 209-10

Death mask, from the original in Convent of San Onofrio, Rome. See Hutton, Portraits…, pp. 9-10; Moore, Talks…, p. 186 [Box 49]

Death Mask

Death Mask

Life Mask

Death Mask

Nice article on Shakespeare death masks:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090421142316.htm

See book:

The True Face of William Shakespeare. The Poet’s Death Mask and Likenesses from Three Periods of His Life. London: Chaucer Press, 2006)

Death Mask