'Realization' in Training and Simulation
'Some time in the late 1800s, the body of a young woman was pulled from the River Seine. Lacking any signs of struggle or foul play, her death was ruled a suicide. She was displayed on a slab of marble in the window of the Paris morgue - standard procedure for corpses awaiting identification. At the time, the morgue was a popular, albeit gruesome, attraction which drew more daily visitors than the Louvre. ... Apparently, the forensic scientist assigned to the drowned girl's cadaver became so captivated by her that he paid a moulder to make a plaster cast of her face.' p.16.
'The face is important. The face: pleasant, delicate features, all languid curves, a relaxed, even blissful expression. Her long, matted eyelashes stuck, as if still wet, to plump cheeks. Her mouth curved into an enigmatic smile. The face, gone unclaimed, triggered an intense, cultish frenzy across Europe. She was dubbed the L'Inconnue de la Seine (the Unknown Woman of the Seine). ... The advent of mechanical reproduction allowed the mask to be copied and sold on a massive scale. ... Widely replicated in plaster, wax and then plastic, L'Inconnue's dead face was used as a model for artists at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and apprentices at beautician training schools.' p.16. | |
'You may have seen her face yourself. In fact, odds are you've kissed it - indeed, 300 million people have. In 1955, tasked with the job of creating a life-size doll for teaching mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Norwegian toymaker Åsmund Lærdal thought back to a death mask he'd noticed years ago, hung in his wife's family home. Lærdal wanted the face to be inviting, not dead-looking. It had to be female, of course, the kind of face men undergoing CPR training would be inclined to kiss. L`Inconnue was, perhaps, the obvious choice for Resuscì Anne, the doll that is still used in schools and swimming pools across the UK and US. Lærdal's website nods to the mask's origins, writing that "the face of death became the face of life".' p.16. |
Ack. Sarah Haque, https://www.sarahhaque.co.uk/
The strange allure of L'Inconnue de la Seine, FT Magazine, 1,149, November 1, 2025. p.16-17. https://www.ft.com/content/64c930ac-b2b7-4314-b915-eb93c87a451f
See also: Wikipedia - L'Inconnue de la Seine
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