Death Mask of Modigliani
Maker
Jacques Lipchitz
(French, born in Lithuania and active in United States, 1891 - 1973)
Date1920 (bronze edition)
MediumCast plaster
Dimensions9 x 5 in. (22.9 x 12.7 cm)
Credit LineBequest of Joseph Halle Schaffner in memory of his beloved mother, Sara H. Schaffner
Copyright© Estate of Jacques Lipchitz, courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York
Object number1973.98
Status
Not on viewThe novelist John Updike published a short poem about his encounter with Jacques Lipchitz’ Death Mask in the March 26, 1960 issue of the New Yorker. In Modigliani’s Death Mask, Updike discovers a chasm between living beings and their postmortem representation:
Could the man have been so small?
Or is life, like rapid motion,?
An enlarging illusion?
