Napoleons death mask in Scotland authentic, says expert

A Scottish researcher has authenticated a death mask kept in a small museum in the Highland nation as belonging to French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Edinburgh, Aug 29 : A Scottish researcher has authenticated a death mask kept in a small museum in the Highland nation as belonging to French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

According to Dr Robert Prescott of St Andrews University, the post-mortem cast was presented to Montrose Natural History and Antiquarian Society just 18 years after Bonaparte's death in 1821 and is now in the Montrose Museum.

In the past, sceptics have expressed doubts about whether it is genuine.

However, Dr Prescott believes this is the finest death mask of Napoleon in existence, as it shows a scar on the left side of his face, which is also seen in a lone life portrait of the French Emperor sketched by the British.

The painting of Napoleon on HMS Bellerophon by Charles Locke Eastlake is the only portrait of the emperor painted from life by a British artist. The work hangs in the National Maritime Museum, in Greenwich, London.

Recently, a prominent Historian and Napoleonic conspiracy theorist had claimed that Napoleon Bonaparte's tomb in Paris could possibly contain the remains of another man.

Bruno Roy-Henry said that an 1815 painting of the French emperor on his way to exile showed a scar of the left side of his face, while no such scar exists on any French portrait or Napoleon's official death mask, which is on display at the Army Museum at Invalides, near his tomb on the Left Bank.

Roy-Henry said that an identical scar appears on another death-mask, which was in the possession of the Royal United Services Institute and sold by Sotheby's to an anonymous American buyer in 2004.

He said it was possible that the British spirited away the original body of the French Emperor and replaced him with Jean-Baptiste Cipriani, his ma�tre-d'hotel on Saint Helena.

"The scar on the English picture is a powerful clue to its authenticity. The English mask shows the true face of the emperor but the [Paris] Army Museum refuses to accept reality. It would be better if the false mask in the Invalides were removed quickly from public view," Roy-Henry said.

ANI