Abraham Lincoln Life Mask

Looking at this cast of Abraham Lincoln’s face, which appears gaunt and careworn, one may think that it is a death mask, but in fact, it was taken from life on February 11, 1865, by sculptor Clark Mills. Life masks were popular in the nineteenth century because they created a duplicate of the subject’s features. A friend of Lincoln’s commented on the mask’s ability to portray “one on whom sorrow and care had done their worst.”