Gracing one of the walls in my living room is a very special image: a cast replica of the putative death mask of the "unknown girl of the Seine" (in French: "L'inconnue de la Seine", aka "La Belle Italienne").
According to a story, around the late 1880s a young woman was pulled out of the River Seine at the Quai du Louvre in Paris. The girl showed no signs of violence, and a pathologist at the Paris Morgue was so taken by her beauty that he made a wax plaster cast death mask of her face (source: Wikipedia).
W.jpg)
Other sources claim that the mask has
different origins, but whatever the real story may be, her beautiful
features and eerily serene expression totally captivates me. In any case, I'm one in a long line of artists before me, who kept a replica of this enigmatic beauty in their home.
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