The lost art of the death mask

The Western world was once obsessed with these macabre memorials.

*This article contains details and images that some readers might find distressing.

On 7 May 1821, two doctors were engrossed in a frantic search. There was a decomposing body at stake – and if they didn't find some plaster soon, its features would be lost forever.

Mere hours earlier, the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had succumbed to a brief illness, after six years in exile. Those in attendance were keen to create a death mask, an impression of the face usually taken soon after the person has died. But there were two small glitches to the plan.

Firstly, the hunt was unfolding on the tropical island of Saint Helena, a barren speck in the South Atlantic, 807 miles (1,299km) from any other land. There were no shops on this "miserable and dreary rock", as Napoleon described it, that could supply highly specialist products such as plaster. Secondly, neither of the doctors present had ever made a death mask before.

The history of death masks stretches back millennia, deep into antiquity. Most of them were not exact replicas taken from moulds, but artworks created for elite members of society – protective armour that could help the deceased to navigate the afterlife or ward off evil spirits.

By the late Middle Ages, Europe had become obsessed with death, after the plague wiped out up to 50% of the population in just four traumatic years. It was at this moment that true death masks superseded the sculpted, artistic kind. These likenesses, created by moulding wax or plaster over the face, were a useful way of fossilising the features of deceased relatives, so that sculptors could use them as a reference for the lifelike portraits displayed at funerals. Then in the 18th Century, something unexpected happened: people began to value death masks for their own sake.

For the next 200 years, doctors across Europe set about assiduously preserving these glimpses of the moments after death for posterity. The faces of icons, criminals and even babies were immortalised in grisly detail – a practise that coincided with a surge of interest in the pseudoscience phrenology, in which a person's personality traits were inferred from the features of their skull. Many death masks were turned into spooky heirlooms, while some became souvenirs that command six-figure sums to this day. One was revered as an object of beauty comparable to the Mona Lisa, inspiring countless artworks and wild theories.

This is a short history of the death mask, and what it can reveal about how our attitudes to death have changed over the centuries. 

Back on the island of Saint Helena, the two doctors still needed to make Napoleon's death mask – and they still couldn't find any fresh plaster. But the pair had a couple of backup ideas.

One of them – Napoleon's personal physician François Antommarchi – darted off to the local village, Jamestown, and purchased some 150 figurines made from plaster. These were then ground down to a powder and used to make an improvised plaster mash. Alas, when this messy mixture was applied to the dead man's face, it didn't work.

The other doctor – Irish surgeon Francis Burton – focused his efforts on tracking down the raw ingredient in plaster: gypsum, a soft mineral found in layers of sedimentary rock. To turn one into the other, gypsum is ground into a powder, and heated to evaporate off its water content. This breaks down the crystals within the rock. The next step is mixing this dehydrated gypsum with water again to form a paste. As it dries, its crystal structure reforms and the plaster is left set in its moulded state.

Eventually a local source of this prized ingredient was identified, and one and a half days after Napoleon took his final, shallow breaths, the cast was accomplished. By this point, Napoleon had been deceased for longer than was usual when making death masks, so his face is immortalised in its deathly state – with sunken eyes and hollowed cheeks. Decomposition had begun to kick in already, and the facial muscles were less tense, giving the usually-melancholy man a relaxed look.

However, if the former French emperor had dreamed that his likeness would have ended up at the bedside of his wife, Marie Louise, or in a place of national honour, he might have been surprised at what happened next. Antommarchi eventually stole the blueprint for his colleague's successful death mask, and created hundreds of copies which could be purchased as collectible souvenirs, for as little as 20 francs. Though the original death mask has long since vanished, its progeny are scattered at museums and in private collections across the globe to this day.

When Isaac Newton died in his sleep at the age of 84, in 1727, he left behind an intimidating legacy. Among other things, this included a corpus of letters and manuscripts comprising some 10 million words of writing, numerous world-changing discoveries, including the laws of gravity, endless notes on failed alchemical experiments – and a bizarre assortment of anagrams of his own name. Soon afterwards, a death mask was added to this list.

In the Roman era, elite citizens often honoured the death of a family member by creating idealised funerary masks. These "imagines" weren't usually buried with the deceased, but kept as memorials and stored in special niches in the family home – and even sometimes worn to other funerals by living family members. This tradition was traditionally reserved for older men and allowed for them to be initiated into a family's canon of ancestors.

But around the 2nd Century AD, there was a twist: imagines became popular among the lower classes, too. These versions were true death masks, made as casts, and in this non-elite world, they weren't just reserved for men. According to research by Kelsey Madden, a research student in archaeology at the University of Sheffield, UK, this hints that, for the lower classes, women and children were also allowed to become "ancestors".

One famous imagine thought to be in this category is that of Claudia Victoria, a 10-year-old girl who lived in the Roman city of Lugdunum in Gaul, which is now buried under Lyon, France. Her round, youthful face was captured in plaster, and buried alongside her in her tomb. The inscription read: "To the departed spirit of Claudia Victoria who lived ten years, one month and eleven days. Her mother Claudia Severina made this monument for her sweet daughter and for herself in her lifetime."

In the late 1880s, the body of a young woman – thought to have drowned – was found floating in the Seine river in Paris. The corpse was taken to the local morgue, which was a popular attraction at the time, and put on display in case anyone could identify the person it belonged to. Instead, in an uncomfortable development to a story that has since been acknowledged as deeply creepy, the pathologist on duty became so taken with the young woman's beauty and innocence that he had a death mask made before she was buried.

The cast from L’Inconnue de la Seine, "the unknown woman of the Seine", in which the woman seems to be smiling contentedly with her lips pursed, was subsequently turned into a popular artwork. The work inspired sculptors, writers and painters, and was displayed on the walls of the houses of ordinary people, until, one day – over half a century after its unknown subject died – a Norwegian toy manufacturer decided to use the face for a lifelike resuscitation doll he was working on. "Resusci Annie", sometimes known as "rescue Annie", was born, and it's been estimated that the CPR courses she has helped with have saved some 2.5 million people from cardiac arrest.

With changing attitudes to death and the growing popularity of photography in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, the practice of making death masks gradually fell out of fashion. People just didn't need them anymore when they could look at a photo of their lost loved ones instead.  

Today the practise of making death masks has largely disappeared. But some artists are still keeping it alive through their own modern interpretations.

One example is the "death mask" series created by Tracey Emin. The English artist is famous for creating honest, sometimes shocking works that tell her own story, and the four impressions – which she took of her own face – have been described as ironic and autobiographical. They also challenge the historical expectation that death masks were created for men.

Another modern take is a work by the sculptor Robert Gober, who preserved the memory of his beloved dog, Paco, by moulding its snout and then blending this with a cast of his own face. The cartoonish result was Gober's way of preserving this ancient tradition – and who knows, it might just catch on.

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