Examining Marie Antoinette's Final Face: What Her Preserved Death Mask Actually Reveals
By Elena Rostova
Did Madame Tussaud really make the death mask at the guillotine?
She did not work at the scaffold itself. If she cast the head, she did so at the Madeleine cemetery shortly after the execution, where bodies were transported for burial in mass lime pits.
Is the death mask in London the actual original?
Madame Tussauds holds the primary plaster casts derived from Marie Grosholtz’s early 19th-century molds. The original 1793 wet-plaster master mold did not survive, as casting processes of that era routinely destroyed the matrix to produce durable copies.
Why does her jaw look so strange in the mask?
The prominent lower chin and underbite are direct manifestations of the Habsburg jaw, a genetic trait caused by centuries of royal intermarriage throughout the Austrian and Spanish dynasties.
Where are Marie Antoinette's actual remains buried today?
Her skeletal remains were exhumed in 1815 during the Bourbon Restoration and reinterred inside the royal necropolis at the Basilica of Saint-Denis near Paris.
Elena Rostova holds a Master's degree in Public Health Journalism. She covers groundbreaking medical research, holistic wellness trends, mental health awareness, and nutritional science.
