A few weeks ago we saw one of these putative death masks for sale in an antiques centre.
L'Inconnue de la Seine (English: The Unknown Woman of the Seine) was an unidentified young woman whose putative death mask became a popular fixture on the walls of artists' homes after 1900. Her visage inspired numerous literary works. In the United States, the mask is also known as La Belle Italienne.
The one we saw wasn't expensive but it's a morbid item to stick on the wall. A talking point perhaps, but still morbid.
3 comments:
There seem to be several accounts of who she was, so the salient historical point seems to be the fact that she was considered a beauty. Today, rather plain-looking with regular features, but nothing special. One wonders what Helen of Troy, Anne Boleyn, Nell Gwynne, and Edith Swan-Neck actually looked like.
The mouth has an uncanny resemblance of The Mona Lisa...
Senora O'Blene and I found ourselves in an Italian cemetery a few years ago, walking off a huge lunch.
The marble statues and tombs were beautifully presented, but the sad faces on the little photographs made the stroll rather sombre...
Sam - yes our ideas of female beauty seem to have changed significantly. To my eye, portraits such as those of Nell Gwynne and Louise de Kéroualle depict women I would certainly not describe as beautiful. I wonder what people of those times would think of our pouty-lipped ideas of beauty?
Scrobs - almost as if it was really a life mask taken from a model.
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