The history of death masks: faces of the departed
Throughout history, humans have shown a consistent desire to remember the dead—not just in spirit, but in form. Among the most haunting and intimate expressions of this desire is the death mask: a cast taken from a person’s face shortly after death.
More realistic and tangible than a portrait and more personal than a gravestone, these masks freeze a final moment in time. They’ve been used to honour monarchs, memorialise artists, and even explore the science of the human skull. But they also speak to something deeply emotional: a desire to remain physically connected to loved ones who have died. From Tutankhamun to Lenin, let’s take a look at death masks through history.
What is a death mask?
A death mask is created by making a mould of a deceased person’s face, typically using wax or plaster. From this mould, a detailed cast is formed—usually in plaster, wax, or metal. The result is a starkly realistic image of the individual’s face, down to the texture of their skin, the shape of their lips, even the furrows of their brow. Unlike an idealised portrait or airbrushed photograph, a death mask shows the exact likeness of a person’s face and their final expression in death.
Origins in antiquity
The origins of death masks can be traced back thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians believed that in order for the soul (particularly the ba and ka, two aspects of the soul) to recognise and reunite with the body after death, the body needed to be preserved and visually identifiable.
By providing a recognisable face—even if stylised—the mask served as a spiritual identifier that allowed the deceased to safely journey through the afterlife.
In Mycenaean Greece, gold masks like the famed "Mask of Agamemnon" were placed on the faces of elite deceased males. These too were more symbolic than literal, but reflect the ancient impulse to preserve and honour nobility who had died.
Rome and the ancestral imagines
The ancient Romans took a more literal approach. Aristocratic families kept imagines maiorum—wax masks of their ancestors—displayed in their homes as symbols of lineage and social identity, reinforcing a family’s heritage and political power.
As part of the funeral procession, actors were hired to wear the death masks of the deceased’s ancestors. Dressed in the traditional garments (togas or armour) appropriate to the ancestor's rank or office, they would march ahead of the bier, recreating a line of familial greatness. This practice gave the illusion that the ancestors had returned to accompany the newly dead to the underworld.
The Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, Christianity became the dominant spiritual and cultural force in Europe. The Church emphasised the soul’s journey to heaven and the spiritual over the physical.
This period saw death masks fall out of fashion because:
The body was seen as temporary, imperfect, and often sinful. The focus shifted from preserving or glorifying the body (as the Romans or Egyptians had done), to saving the soul through prayer, confession, and penance.
Creating and displaying realistic facial casts of the dead could be viewed as vanity or even idolatry, potentially distracting from spiritual salvation.
Although stone effigies were created for the nobility, these were stylised and not realistic representations of the deceased.
The Renaissance and beyond
After a lull during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance revived the practice, aided by growing interest in anatomy, realism, and a classical revival. Artists and nobles alike had death masks made, including famous figures like Dante Alighieri (see right), Torquato Tasso, and Benvenuto Cellini.
These masks were often used to produce posthumous portraits or sculptures. British monarchs from this time who had death masks made include Henry VII and Mary Queen of Scots.
The 18th and 19th Centuries: science meets sentiment
During the Enlightenment and into the Victorian era, death masks became increasingly popular—now serving not only as memorials but also as objects of scientific and pseudoscientific curiosity. Phrenologists believed that a person’s character could be read from the bumps and curves of their skull, and death masks offered the perfect data source.
While the practice of photography was growing in sophistication and popularity, death masks still found their place amongst the Victorian ‘cult of mourning’, a profound societal preoccupation. A death mask of Prince Albert was taken and kept by Queen Victoria as a personal relic, though her final instructions refused to allow to have one made of herself.
Due to their cost and complexity, death masks were generally restricted to the upper classes or public figures. Many of the 19th century’s most famous figures had masks made: Napoleon Bonaparte, Beethoven, Blake, and Voltaire, to name a few.
However, infamous individuals could also be captured forever in a death mask for the public to view, as in the case of Richard Parker (above), whose death mask was taken in 1797 after he was hanged for his part in the Nore mutiny.
L’Inconnue de la Seine: the most famous death mask of all
Among all death masks, none has inspired more mystery and fascination than that of L’Inconnue de la Seine—the Unknown Woman of the Seine. Sometime in the late 1880s, the body of a young woman was pulled from the River Seine in Paris.
There were no signs of violence. Authorities believed she had drowned—possibly a suicide. Her identity was never discovered, and her unclaimed body might have vanished into anonymity.
But something changed when a pathologist at the Paris morgue, struck by her serene beauty, made a plaster cast of her face. The mask captured a calm, almost smiling expression—an enigmatic peace that captivated artists, writers, and bohemians across Europe.
Soon, reproductions of her mask adorned the walls of Parisian studios and cafes. She became a muse to Surrealists, poets, and existentialists. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about her. Novels were inspired by her. Some have argued that the mask was mostly taken from a live model, and the story was in fact just that, a story.
Then, in the 1950s, the story took another strange turn. A Norwegian toy manufacturer used her face as the model for the first CPR training mannequin—the now globally recognised Resusci Anne. Her face, once plucked from a Paris riverbank, went on to ‘save’ millions of lives, making L’Inconnue arguably the most-kissed face in history.
The decline of death masks
With the rise of photography and its relatively lower cost, changing attitudes toward death through the mass slaughters of World Wars I and II, the use of death masks declined during the 20th century. By the mid-20th century, the art world had largely moved away from realism and anatomical exactness in favour of abstraction, modernism and conceptual art, rather than realism.
However, notable figures such as Vladimir Lenin, James Joyce, and William Butler Yeats still had masks made.
Why death masks still matter
Death masks sit at the intersection of art, science, and mourning. Unlike portraits, which are interpretive, masks offer something unfiltered—a direct physical imprint of a life ended. They are chilling but human, and that makes them compelling.
The history of death masks is more than a chronicle of old rituals. It's a mirror of how we, across centuries and cultures, have tried to face death—literally and metaphorically.
