A Matter of Life and Death Masks

A trip to Edinburgh the other week turned up these life and death masks in the library of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The first six could easily come from my family album.

Male Insane / Female Extreme Cunning

Male Celtic Type / Male English Type

Female Idiot / Female Idiot

Murderers: George Bryce / John Adam

Murderers: George Campbell / John Dempsey

William Burke / William Hare

Isambard Kingdom Brunel / Benjamin Franklin

Voltaire / Andrew Coombe

James Hogg / John James Audubon

Jacques-Louis David / Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Felix Mendehlsson / Joseph Hayden

John Keats / George Combe (phrenologist)