Death Masks and Post-Mortem Portraits: How People Kept a Face

Before there were photographs, how did people keep the face of someone who had died? One answer was a mask made from the face itself. The idea is old, a little eerie, and tells us a lot about how people have wanted to remember the dead.

What is a death mask?

A cast of a person’s face made after death. A reference overview describes it as a likeness, typically wax or plaster, made by taking a cast or impression from the corpse. It might be kept as a memento, or used to make a portrait or sculpture. The Canadian Medical Association Journal explains that the practice arose in the Middle Ages. At first it was reserved for royalty, but by the 18th and 19th centuries it was extended to a broader range of political and intellectual figures.

How was one made?

With oil and plaster. The National Park Service describes how the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens made the death mask of President James Garfield after his death in 1881. He would have covered the face with lard and painted on several layers of plaster. When the plaster dried, he removed the impression and used it to make a mold for a bronze cast. The medical journal notes that an artist might touch up the result, for example altering the closed eyelids so they look open. Even though death masks look lifelike, the writer notes, they were clearly different from human flesh.

What were death masks used for?

Memory, art, and sometimes identification. The National Park Service says it was common into the 20th century to make a plaster impression moments after a famous person died, to capture the last image for later portraits or statues. Since the 13th century, masks have helped sculptors make tomb effigies, and in medieval France and England real death masks were used for royal funeral effigies that lay in state. A reference overview adds that before photography, features of unidentified bodies were sometimes preserved in death masks so relatives seeking a missing person could recognize them. Some masks have a surprising afterlife: the face of the world’s first CPR training mannequin, introduced in 1960, was modeled on a death mask of a drowned young woman.

Who had one?

Famous people. The National Park Service names Shakespeare, Washington, Napoleon, Newton, Beethoven, Lincoln, and Lenin among those immortalized in death masks. In the 19th century, according to one article, masks became an after-death essential for Russian royals and cultural figures. The same overview notes that some proponents of phrenology, a pseudoscience, also used death masks and life masks for their theories.

What replaced them?

Photography. The medical journal says that after 1840 light was used more often than plaster to record the features of the dead, and that photography allowed all classes to commission portraits of deceased relatives. There were even more images of dead infants and toddlers, lovingly dressed and photographed for posterity. A history of Princeton’s death mask collection says casting from the face remained a significant memorial practice in Europe and America into the early 20th century. It declined rapidly after the 1860s, when photography became the main way to remember the dead.

Why does this matter?

Because it shows a very human wish: to hold on to a face. For a related custom of the same era, see Victorian Mourning Customs, and for older images of death, The Grim Reaper and the Dance of Death.