Abraham Lincoln, 1808-1865. Life Mask
George Washington, 1732-1799. Life Mask
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834. Death Mask
Edmund Burke, 1729-1797. Death Mask
Oliver Cromwell, 1599-1658. Death Mask
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, 1804-1881. Death Mask
Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Death Mask
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790. Life Mask
David Garrick, 1717-1779. Life Mask
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832. Life Mask
Ulysses S Grant, 1822-1885. Death Mask
John Keats, 1795-1821. Life Mask
Heinrich Heine, 1797-1856. Death Mask
Henry IV, King of France, 1553-1610. Death Mask
Jean Paul Marat, 1743-1793. Death Mask
Felix Mendelssohn, 1809-1847. Death Mask
Sir Isaac Newton, 1642-1727. Death Mask
Thomas Paine, 1737-1809. Death Mask
Viscount Henry Jon Temple Palmerston, 1784-1865. Death Mask
Maximilien Robespierre, 1758-1794. Death Mask
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882. Death Mask
Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832. Death Mask
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1751-1816. Death Mask
Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745 Death Mask
William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811-1863. Death Mask
Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910. Death Mask
William Wordsworth, 1770-1850. Life Mask
Walt Whitman, 1819-1892. Death Mask
Ludwig van Beethoven, 1779-1827. Life Mask
Robert E Lee, 1807-1870. Life Mask
…
Thank you to Princeton University Library
I had no idea so many folks had life and/or death masks. I guess women did not go for getting a casting made of their countenances, or they were simply were not kept?
These are almost unbearably haunting. Thank you.
I think the Jean Paul Marat one interests me the most, because he was stabbed in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday at the height of the French Revolution. The interesting part, though, is that the painting by David shows the exact same expression on his face as his death mask captured. Bizarre!
There are some masks made of/for queens and such, Bessie.
Some of these would make perfect Halloween masks, because they look pretty scary. William Makepeace Thackeray looks a little bit like Frankenstein..
Very interesting,capturing the last moment of these men.Poetic and true..
Fascinating, but I have one question regarding Robespierre’s. It’s well known that he shot a good piece of his jaw off in a failed suicide attempt prior to his execution, how were they able to complete the mask?