death-mask
- Museum number
- SLMisc.2010
- Description
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Wax copy of death mask; Oliver Cromwell; taken after the body had been embalmed; it shows the cloth bound round the head to cover the cincture, and the face has a beardlet and moustache but the wart has been pared off; on the back an inscription in wax; inside the back is a metal wire bent round to follow the outline of the face.
- Dimensions
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Length: 21.30 centimetres
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Weight: 354.80 grammes
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Width: 16.20 centimetres
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Depth: 10 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
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Sir Hans Sloane’s ‘Miscellanea’ catalogue is a bound volume in Central Archives containing seven separate catalogues: ‘Miscellanies’, ‘Antiquities’, ‘Seals’, ‘Pictures’, ‘Mathematical Instruments’, ‘Agate Handles’ and ‘Agate Cups, Bottles, Spoons’. Each contains numbered entries that list and describe objects collected by Sloane between the 1680s and 1750s. Each catalogue begins with object number one.
Text from Sloane Miscellanea catalogue: Miscellanea Miscellanies 2010 "2010. A mask of, Oliver Cromwell."
This was previously transcribed in the database as: 'A mask of Oliver Cromwell face from Mr. Killigrew. 1987.' but this seems to have mistakenly iincluded some details from the previous line, for catalogue number 2009.
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There is another death mask said to be of Cromwell in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, but the face is not like the BM mask. John Piper expressed some doubts about the identity of the British Museum mask in the early 1950s, see Walpole Society publication, 34 (1952-4), and indeed the mask lacks the famous wart (it may possibly have disappeared in the embalming process).It was taken off public display in 1954 (see file), but reinstated some time later. It entered the collection in 1753 as Cromwell's death mask, and may have belonged to Sloane long before he died.
Cromwell's head is now in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
- Location
- On display (G46/dc11)
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2002 16 Sep-1 Dec, Leeds, Henry Moore Institute, Changing Faces
Formerly displayed in the 'Renaissance Corridor', near the Waddesdon Bequest, in 1970s (or earlier) and 1980s (A, Dawson)
- Condition
- Repaired.
- Acquisition date
- 1753
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- SLMisc.2010
- Additional IDs
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Other BM number: OA.4276 (original Sloane reg.no re-identified)
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Sloane Miscellanea Catalogue number: 2010 (Miscellanies)