Lincoln and Washington
 
Back in the old days, if you did something as worthy of note as supply the basis for a Roger Daltrey/Ken Russell collaboration (also a hit by the band Phoenix), invent the Panopticon, or write Tristram Shandy, you can bet that someone was going to violate your still-fresh corpse by taking a mold of your face in repose, so that future generations (that’s us) could gawk and say “Looked like a bit of a pillock.”

These images come from the Laurence Hutton Collection of Life and Death Masks, located at the Manuscripts Division of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Anyone surprise you? The most interesting are probably the masks of Lincoln and Whitman. I think George Washington’s mask absolutely matches his depictions in paintings and currency. Goethe’s would make the best gargoyle.
 

Elizabeth I, d. 1603
 

Oliver Cromwell, d. 1658
 
More death masks after the jump…..