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Watch Elettra Wiedemann and Lynn Yaeger Tour a Death Mask Museum Outside Paris

On the outskirts of central Paris sits the Lorenzi Moulage d’Art, a generations-old sculpture workshop in business since the 1870s. Its narrow halls and tight rooms are filled floor to ceiling with shelves of plaster busts and figurines. But what drew Elettra Wiedemann and Lynn Yaeger there was the promise of a collection of famous “death masks” — casts made of notable faces after one’s death to preserve the perfect facial features to aid in the reproduction of sculptures or paintings of someone after their demise. They got up close and personal with the faces of composers Frédéric Chopin and Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as Napoleon and France’s King Henry IV. Watch as they also find the young woman whose face later became the model for most of today’s CPR training dummies.

Video: Wiedemann & Yaeger Tour Death Mask Museum