Portraits in Plaster, from the Collection of Laurence Hutton

There is something undeniably eerie and intimate about a death mask. It is a face stripped of performance, the final impression of a human being captured in plaster. Laurence Hutton collected such things, and this 1894 volume documents his extraordinary assemblage of casts spanning centuries of famous figures. The collection began by accident in 1860s New York, when Hutton stumbled upon half a dozen neglected masks discarded in a dustbin after their owner died. Some dated back to Dante and Tasso. Over decades, he tracked down masks of poets, scientists, statesmen, and performers, Newton, Booth, and many others, each accompanied by a biographical essay that tries to know the person behind the face. Hutton believed these masks offered something paintings could not: unflinching truth, unmediated by artistic interpretation or flattery. For modern readers, the book is a curious artifact of Victorian antiquarianism, a window into an era's obsession with relics and authenticity. It preserves not just the likenesses but the strange intimacy of touching the face of someone long dead.