Some people build model ships...

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

But this man.... http://boisdejustice.com/Home/Home.html
Hmm...!
If you can lightly skip over his take on the Revolution (he knows a lot about guillotines, but evidently not much about the 1790's!) the history page has a pre-1925 fire photo of the Paris guillotine blade and lunette. There was a fire in 1925 that destroyed Madame Tussauds in London, including, sadly, most of the Revolution and Napoleon artefacts, but the blade survived, though damaged - I don't know what became of the lunette (I last went when I was 5 or 6!). I suppose you have to take their word for it that it's the one: it's now billed as 'the blade that killed Marie-Antoinette' (and I bet they were tempted to add 'like in the movie'?), but if that's the case parts, if not all of it, must also have been used to kill - well, pretty well everyone that everyone here is interested in...which is a weird and horrible thought...
http://boisdejustice.com/History/History.html
(btw in case you didn't know, Tussaud also allegedly took Robespierre's 'death mask' -the Parisian place that makes copies believes it was actually taken in life, which is plausible - Washington had his cast in life, as did many politicians, poets etc. - but billing it as taken at the foot of the guillotine sounds more dramatic! http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/01/france.art )
Gosh, I'm morbid today!

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

According to the historian Antoine de Baecque, the death mask in Mme Tussaud's could not have been made from life, as has often been asserted--a rather persistent legend. This is because the Thermidorians expressly prevented it from being made: "Contrary to the legends that were spread, not only was no death mask of Robespierre taken in wax, before or after the execution, but we also find in the archives of the two committees, the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security, an order of 10 Thermidor 'relative to the disposing of the conspirators." It recommends "the acquisition of a great quantity of time,' of which, it then says, "a substantial layer will be spread over the remains of the tyrants to corrupt them and prevent them from one day being deified." A series of measures is thus taken in the immediacy of events. The final disappearance of the corpses of the Robespierrists must be hastened, the Incorruptible corrupted: decomposition of the bodies is accelerated, the communal ditch of the Errancis closely guarded, as well as the Rue du Rocher, which leads to it, to avoid any theft of "relics," and a death mask is prohibited, setting this apart from other famous victims of the guillotine, executions in the course of which the executioners were less scrupulous." (de Baecque, trans. Charlotte Mandell, Glory and Terror pp. 150-1)

As to its having been taken in life, well, it's possible I suppose. But it's no less possible that it was made from memory with his portrait as a guide.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I've seen some of 'Glory and Terror', and apparently Hector Fleischmann also makes a case against it, though I don't know in which book or what the case is. Thompson refers to several different death masks, though most I've seen appear to be the same cast, differently made up, and if attributed at all, attributed to Tussaud....(except one, that looks like Alain Delon with a shot jaw!) but...I still don't think it would have been impossible to make the cast, with a bit of bribery! I've seen references to the auction of Robespierre and Saint-Just's possessions, several months later, including two (sometimes three!) 'bloodstained' coats allegedly belonging to the brothers and allegedly worn on 9/10th Thermidor, and sold for 800 livres - they'd have been more relaxed about selling relics by that point, but it does suggest that the order to obliterate Robespierre wasn't strictly followed in all quarters.

However, it doesn't have a jaw wound, and it isn't swollen, as you'd expect after 17 hours or so of injury.
This is odd because, if it was sculpted- rather than cast- posthumously for a post Thermidor exhibit, you'd expect them to make much of the world- famous injury, and make it look satisfyingly hideous and contorted with pain.
Having your life-mask made was fashionable (Washington had his done while alive, and whilst it was uncomfortable a lot of people went through with it to be immortalised!) and I'd expect it's possible Tussaud may have requested to make a cast from life, and then embellished the story to the gorier severed-head version when she moved to London.
To add to the confusion, though, I've also come across a reference to a 'date unknown' life mask of Robespierre by Jean-Antoine Houdon. It was Houdon who took the plaster cast of Washington, whilst making a scuplture of him, and made life and death masks and sculptures in Paris during the revolution, though I've never seen a picture of his life mask of Robespierre - does it exist? Did it survive? Maybe Tussaud 'borrowed' it, and that's the one, Houdon's, with added blood and bandages, on the spike in various Chambers of Horrors?

This one, which is the one I've seen billed as the 'Tussaud' one http://oocradio.blogspot.com/2008/01/death-mask-tuesday-enemies-within-ed.html (that photo seems to have been done with a wide angle lens!) does seem to be a cast of a face - the eyelids shut (in death, or to keep out the plaster? - surely a clay sculptor would model them open if working from a sitter or a sketch), the eyebrows are messy, rather than neat as you'd expect from a head modelled in clay, there are pockmarks,etc. and the bone and muscle structure correspond closely to the famous stripey Carnavalet portrait...it would be interesing to project a slide over it to see if it matched! - though that also leaves the question of the source and date of the anonymous oil portrait! (What if one was done from the other!?) I've read that one of their portraits came from David D'Angers' estate, and he was given it by Souberbielle, who was given it by Robespierre - great story if true...but nothing's ever certain in this field!

So, after that very messy theorising...I think life mask, but I wouldn't stake my life on it!

Have you come across the story that Danton had his wife dug up so one of the Deseine brothers could make a clay model of her face? If it's true, does the model survive?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Additional thought! I did once think maybe it could have been made by David D'Angers from the oil, if he had the oil in his private collection - he had the skill and the sympathy - but I presume the mask first appeared long before he was active, and why make a sculpture with closed eyes, or a fake death mask with no wound? Tussauds have (or had - there was a ww2 blitz bomb after the '25 fire) the mould 'matrix', but that could be a cast from a cast, and unless it could be forensically examined for eyebrow hairs or blood (after the fire?) I suppose there's no way of knowing...though it would be fun to try...