Public Lecture - ‘Robespierre’s Nose: The Physionotrace and Revolutionary Portraiture’
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For December’s talk, we’re excited to welcome Dr Marianne Gilchrist to speak on the theme: ‘Robespierre’s Nose: The Physionotrace and Revolutionary Portraiture’.
How can we be sure what famous historical characters really looked like? Only a handful of important figures from the French Revolution lived to be photographed. How can we be sure of the rest?
On the eve of the French Revolution, Gilles-Louis Chrétien, a court cellist, developed the physionotrace device. This created accurate portraits, traced directly from the sitter's profile like a ‘positive’ version of a silhouette. In Paris and in the USA, it became extremely popular. Portraits made in this way can serve as a ‘gold standard’ to check the identity of other pictures.
Maximilien Robespierre provides a useful test-case. Many portraits are claimed as him, some engraved in his lifetime, others only appearing on the collector market in 19-20C. Can his physionotrace profile, with its distinctively perky nose, help us authenticate some alleged portraits – including the so-called 'death mask', used in a controversial 2013 reconstruction? How many are him, how many are Faux-bespierres?