A Potted History of Life/Death Masks - From original clay and wax masks to modern capture technology where 3D portraiture now adds a new dimension to preserving memories of the people we love.
Death Masks
In Western cultures a death mask is a wax or plaster cast made of a person’s face following death. Death masks may be mementos of the dead, or be used for creation of three dimensional portraits. In other cultures a death mask may be a clay or another artifact placed on the face of the deceased before burial rites. The best known of these are the masks used by ancient Egyptians as part of the mummification process, such as Tutankhamen’s burial mask. In the seventeenth century in some European countries, it was common for death masks to be used as part of an effigy of the deceased and displayed at state funerals. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they were also used to record the features of unknown corpses for purposes of identification. A function later replaced by photography.
History
Masks of deceased persons are part of traditions in many countries. In ancient Egypt, the most important process of the funeral ceremony was the mummification of the body, where, after prayers and consecration, it would be placed into a sarcophagus, which would be enamelled and decorated with gold and gems. A special element of the rite was a sculpted mask, which was placed onto the face of the deceased. This mask was believed to strengthen the spirit of the mummy and guard the soul from evil spirits on its way to the after world. The mask of Tutankhamen made of gold and gems, conveys the highly stylized features of the ancient ruler. However, those such masks were not, made from casts of the features; but rather, the mummification process in itself, which preserved the features of the deceased. In Roman portrait sculptures, the lifelike character has been attributed to the earlier Roman use of wax to preserve the features of deceased family members. These wax masks were subsequently reproduced in stone.
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Casts
In the late Middle Ages, a shift took place from sculpted masks to true death masks, when these would be made of wax or plaster. These masks would not be interred with the deceased but instead, following their use in funeral ceremonies, would later be kept in libraries, museums and universities. Death masks were not only the preserve of deceased royalty and nobility, but also of eminent poets, philosophers, and dramatists; the celebrities of their day! As earlier in ancient Rome, death masks were often subsequently used in making marble sculpture portraits, busts or engravings of the deceased.
Modern Day
Since the birth of photography in the early 1800s much of the portraiture we see today has been created through the use of the camera and as a result we have seen a move away from the traditionally painted or 3D sculptured portrait. The production and time costs saving when compared to those oil painted and sculptured portraits ensured portraiture would be available to the masses. The first permanent photographic image produced was in 1826 by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. He produced his photographs on a polished pewter plate which would be covered with a petroleum derivative called bitumen of Judea. The bitumen would harden as it was exposed to light and any unhardened material would then be washed away. The metal plate when polished, would then provide a negative image from which, when coated with ink, could be used to impress a positive image upon paper to produce a print. Further development in a partnership with Louis Daguerre lead after his death in 1833 to Daguerre himself inventing a process using silver on a copper plate christened the daguerreotype. The daguerreotype itself proved popular in responding to the demand for portraiture emerging from the middle classes during the Industrial Revolution. Since then at the end of the twentieth century, we have seen the rising influence of the digital camera and the ability to manipulate the created images still further by use of a computer aided packages. Sadly, however good this was at helping us to see and remember ancestors long gone, it has only ever been able to produce images two dimensionally on a flat surface!
Today!!!
Of course a true death mask is perhaps something that not all of us in this day and age would contemplate and even though it can be done in a completely non-invasive way which is totally non contact and respectful to the diseased it still will not appeal to everyone! However many people are looking for fitting memorials for their loved ones these days and of course amongst other things they are adding photographs to the headstones!
Just as with a photograph these masks can be created at anytime during a lifetime. They can be made as an ornamental item for display, mounted and framed for wall hanging or of course supplied ready for attachment to a head stone!
If you would like further details about this service and all the options that 3D Portraiture can offer you...
Please follow the link to New Dimension - 3D Portraits & Sculpture Modelling By Andrew Eldridge
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