televandalist: This is  L’Inconnue de la Seine, the death mask of an unknown woman found drowned in the Seine in the late 1880s. Photographs and reproductions of the death mask were very popular in France after 1900 and there was a literary fashion in creating stories to match her Mona Lisa smile, her mystery and her tragic end, usually stories involving suicide after disappointment in love. Even Nabokov wrote a poem called L’Inconnue de la Seine. Remarkably, eerily, bizarrely, the face of Resusci Annie, the mannequin you use to practice CPR is modeled on the death mask: http://www.laerdal.com/docid/1117082/The-Girl-from-the-River-Seine Radiolab also did a great podcast about her. Listen here

televandalist:

This is  L’Inconnue de la Seine, the death mask of an unknown woman found drowned in the Seine in the late 1880s. Photographs and reproductions of the death mask were very popular in France after 1900 and there was a literary fashion in creating stories to match her Mona Lisa smile, her mystery and her tragic end, usually stories involving suicide after disappointment in love. Even Nabokov wrote a poem called L’Inconnue de la Seine.

Remarkably, eerily, bizarrely, the face of Resusci Annie, the mannequin you use to practice CPR is modeled on the death mask:

http://www.laerdal.com/docid/1117082/The-Girl-from-the-River-Seine

Radiolab also did a great podcast about her. Listen here

(Source: conorhoughton, via shitty-best-teacher)

Tags: radiolab science curiosities death masks