‘Death is a very poor painter’: the 19th-century craze for plaster casts

Fragility: A History of Plaster Alain Corbin

Polity, pp.88, 35

On the morning of 7 May 1821 an urgent task was performed at Longwood House on St Helena. A day and a half previously, the celebrated prisoner for whom this dwelling had been built had died. Obviously it was necessary to make his death mask, and fortunately a British military doctor, expert in such matters, was at hand to do so.

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TaggedArt history, Beethoven, death masks, life masks, Michelangelo’s David, Napoleon, plaster casts, Queen Victoria, the Elephant of the Bastille, Victor Hugo

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‘Death is a very poor painter’: the 19th-century craze for plaster casts

Bourgeois homes in the early 19th century became ‘virtual museums of death’, with models of heroes jostling replicas of the hands and feet of lost loved ones

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