Argh! Now I shall have nightmares about being chased by a two-headed Frederick the Great zombie.
As it happens, the current issue of 'Philosophy Now' carries an advert (my scan) for copies of the death mask of Nietzsche. Why anyone would want such a thing is unfathomable, but the point is - it looks sort of like Nietzsche, but nothing like this ...
What's going on?
Mary Queen of Scots was hot!
Spooky and fascinating.
Oh, great. Now I'm going to have nightmares about John Calhoun.
Phineas Gage is really interesting but, um, I guess most people have trouble looking their best when dead.
Found I had to see them all. Wish there had been a bit of information about who and how the casts were made. Fine post, Jerry Garcia, thanks.
This is very creepy, but Robespierre was quite attractive as well.
More information would definately be nice. Great find, Jerry Garcia. The Bruce Lee one was kind of creepy. And I don't think that Chief Seattle would be very happy about this.
Yes, I found the dearth of information frustrating. It was interesting to have to click on the thumbnail to see who it was, though. Many surprises. I'd never seen Beethoven's mask. Gave me shivers and brought tears to my eyes.
And Plegmund - Yes, I wonder how much revisionist reshaping is done by sculptors. As spackle pointed out, Voltaire could have done with a post-mortem makeover!
Thanatos.net also has Memento Mori, a death photography archive.
The death masks does not sadden me - most of old men who have lived full, often remarkable lives.
But the photographs are mostly of children and babies, whose picture seems to have been taken because they died so soon or suddenly that there was no other photo of them. It has the sense of lives snuffed out before they have been lived.
a short Roman death mask explanation,
and the travels of Napoleon's deathmask.
Yes, bees...
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—
He hath awakened from the dream of life—
’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings.—We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
atchafalaya, thanks for supplying information to go with those masks.
Bah! Had years of Latin and they never taught us anything about Roman death masks! /victim of deficient education
Best. Post. Ever.
Aye, spackle, but oh! woe! poor Shelley is not here! Not even his scorched heart which was all his dear wife had to remember him by!
*gropes blindly for handkerchief*
>dogs begin howling, too<
All that was, seemed as if it had been not;
And all the gazer’s mind was strewn beneath
Her feet like embers; and she, thought by thought,
Trampled its sparks into the dust of death.
*lifts glass of cock-punch*
Souls of poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's canary wine?
cock-punch?!
spackle! sorry, didn't reflect that might sound odd to monkeys who've joined recently, I've grown so debased by long use used to it.
Cock-punch is a joke, rather venerable joke by now.
Somehow I had missed the information that Keats was a mere 26 years old when he passed. Wow....what might have been?
I refuse to go any further with the photo one, I cannot bear to look at dead babies/children.
Banana's to Jerry Garcia on this one.
Great post. Instant bookmark.
*extends hand with handkerchief to Darshon*
A trifle damp, but still serviceable.
*thankfully accepts hanky/sniffles*
I saw Guiseppi Verdi's death mask at the La Scala Museum in Milan, but I'm really not fascinated by this sort of morbid artifact. All these death masks look like they are quite smelly.
debased by long useused to it. Cock-punch is a joke, rather venerable joke by now.