Cast Of Character: The Ultimate Selfie, The Death Mask

Dante' author The Inferno

Cast Of Character: The Ultimate Selfie

So, looking for work again.
I'm trying to brainstorm where my skills can best be applied and, of course,
how to get paid.
Well, I have a lot of experience in lots of things but primarily mold making,
casting and wood work.
There are some others but, the government likes their control just a little too much.
That is not the subject of this post.

Beethoven

Wax museums are almost a thing of the past.
Making resin copies of museum pieces would be cool.
I have been looking for a job making artificial limbs, which, unfortunately,
is in greater demand than it should be.
Maybe a job at a dental laboratory,casting people's mouths.

Napoleon

What I really want to do, however, is molding and casting death masks and life masks.
There doesn't seen to be a big demand here but, I think it can be brought back.
This is, after all, the age of the selfie.
The death mask has to be the ultimate and final selfie.
There is a long history of death masks.
Long before photography, there was the death mask.

George Washington

Life masks are a tiny minority, outside of Hollywood and some phrenology collections.
Kings, Queens, nobility, scholars, statesmen and more,
the largest collections i've seen are of the condemned.
The hanged men, or guillotined, in the case of Maximilien de Robespierre,
leader of the French revolution,
whose death mask was cast from a mold made from his severed head.
The death mask on King Tutankhamun's inner sarcophagus,
I think is the oldest I could find.
It is strange to look on the face of someone dead for 33 centuries.
Especially one, given by gold, the appearance of life.

King Tutankhamun

images: Dante, library.princeton.edu, Beethoven, benmerrick3d.wordpress.com, Napoleon, upload.wikimedia.org
George Washington, 4.bp.blogspot.com, Tut, www.ancient-origins.net