11Story

22 January 2010

Mask

 

Copy of a death mask. Maker unknown. London, Probably between 1658 and 1753 Photograph. Original wax. 22.3 x 16.41 cm © Trustees of the British Museum SLMisc.2010. Photographer Paul Gardner

When a subject is portrayed by different artists, in different styles, media and circumstances, at different times, or for different purposes, it may be unclear whether the resulting images all refer to the same individual. Since it is made from a mould taken directly from the face shortly after death, allowing little scope for artistic interpretation, a death mask captures the individual appearance of the subject with a high degree of accuracy. The death mask of an obscure subject who had no other portraits made during his or her lifetime might then remain, paradoxically, an intimate likeness of someone about whom nothing else is known. The death mask illustrated here, however, may well be that of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), who was both famous and the subject of several original portraits and a host of secondary copies. This one in the British Museum has a different-looking rival in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Accompanying documentary evidence is insufficient for all experts to agree on which alternative looks more like his other images.

 
 
 

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