More Voltaire en papier-maché

I own a copy of a A Wanderer in Paris by E.V. Lucas, dated 1908, in which our intrepid Edwardian cultural explorer encounters in the Musée Carnavalet a "painted life-mask of Voltaire, very horrible".  Is it still there, I wondered?  Well, it is and it is still horrible.

The label says

Masque de Voltaire

Carton moule en peint au naturel

Don de M Maurice Michon, 1898

inv. S 2072

I haven't managed to discover any more about this delight, but thanks a lot for your gift, Maurice!

Voltaire en papier-maché

On July 11th 1791, David devised a magnificent classical pageant to accompany the translation of Voltaire's body to the Panthéon.  (Sadly it rained heavily, rendering the twelve white horses and their triumphal chariot decidedly mud-bespattered and unheroic). The procession included four men dressed in classic theatre costumes carrying a golden statue of Voltaire....

Voltaire considers the reserve stack books
Bibliothèque Jacques-Villon, Rouen

...And here it is - a full size papier-maché version of Houdon's famous seated statue of the great philosopher!. He's lost his gold and lurks unloved among the bookcases of the municipal library in Rouen (not sure how he got there). The statue has lately featured in scholarly articles on Houdon - so, who knows, perhaps they will let him out of the corner now.

References
Voltaire's funeral procession on the Chateau de Cirey website
http://www.visitvoltaire.com/voltaire's_later_life_funeral_procession.htm

Rouen libraries - Collections (ppt)
www.docexplore.eu/wp-content/.../BMR_pres_eng.ppt‎

“Le Voltaire assis de Houdon: étude et restauration” Technè: la science au service de l'histoire de l'art et des civilisations  21 (2005)  

Article concerning the conservation of the terracotta Houdon Voltaire in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier.

"The second part of the article describes a comparative study made possible through the restoration project, in which the Montpellier work was studied along with four replicas (plaster in the Bibliotheque nationale; marble in the Comédie française; terracotta in the Musée Voltaire, Geneva; and papier-mâché in the municipal library, Rouen) as well as the photographic documentation of an additional three. Thanks to these investigations, it has proved possible to propose grouping the known replicas in two different chronological series and to open up some new research perspectives"

In search of Maximilien....

Where better to begin than at the epicentre?
  
What did Robespierre REALLY  look like?

There are several portraits and loads of prints and caricatures, but his features remain illusive; the slightest variation in proportions changes the face and the sense of the man.

Lithograph by Francois Seraphin Delpech (1832)
Wellcome Institute of Medicine
http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/0c/23/06cb2db937eb68a83e878532df3d.jpg

According to David Jordan  this lithograph by Delpech (or a slight variant by Henri Grévedon) is the one referred to by Charlotte Robespierre in her Memoirs as the best likeness of her brother. "A portrait of Robespierre", probably this one,  was included in the inventory of possessions made on her death in August 1834.  It is clearly a version of the famous anonymous oil in the Musée Carnavalet.

Anon Musée Carnavalet
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robespierre.jpg

To anyone following the recent "Robespierre's cravat" debate on Tumblr - most of the the frilly bit is a shirt front; but, look carefully, the top frill has a pink edge and is the bow of a cravat.










References

Jordan, David P. The Revolutionary career of Maximilien Robespierre, New York: The Free Press (1985) p.254