Definition of Death Mask

The death mask is the concept used to name that faithful and exact copy of the face of an individual who has died and that is made after his death through the technique of casting in plaster with the special mission of preserving his face and that it is as accurate as possible with respect to the one he observed in life.

It should be noted that the aforementioned emptying technique is a type of procedure widely used in instances of reliefs and sculptures and that is achieved by placing the model in question at reproduce, plaster liquid, gelatin, fiberglass, having to wait for it to harden to carry out the mold, then, it is separated from the face of the individual and on the achieved mold we will work to obtain the copies that are want.

Meanwhile, for the reproduction materials such as beeswax or this same are used material plus the combination with resins.

This type of practice dates back several silos, since cultures such as the Roman and Egyptian knew how to make use of it, even centuries later, in the so-called

Middle Ages and later between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it continued very much in force, being extremely frequent use to immortalize the faces of those most notable and recognized personalities in society, the politics, among others, highlighting in particular the cases of: the musician Ludwig Van Beethoven, the politician Napoleon Bonaparte, Julio César, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benito Juárez, Antoni Gaudí, among others.

Currently, the aforementioned practice is not widespread as in the past, although, the policemanforensic He uses it a lot when it comes to reconstructing the faces of victims and perpetrators.

Themes in Death Mask