Death mask

Well, for sure, but there was no lawsuit involved in this one.

Zeman just got it, dude, and he took out the Death Mask chapter.

And he has a different opinion on that.

But, I mean,

I don't know if you had heard that, but there was one thing in common in all of that, and it's what do we believe in, right? Right.

Now, I noticed, I mean, I've had an opportunity to see, actually, I know somebody who has a death mask of one of the popes, and death masks were an important part of our grieving process in the early days, too.

Do you have any masks there at the museum?

Yes, we do have a death mask of General Lee.

of them.

Oh, yeah, there's a lot.

And when we were in mortician school, we actually were taught how to make death masks, even though we don't hardly do them anymore.

Yeah, go ahead.

A study for Ophelia, Death of Ophelia by Millais, a detail of a constable, a country lane, and it's a kid who looks like he's died, actually, or been drowned.

Laburnum Tree by Spencer, Balm and Blossom by Bonnard, Shoreham Garden by Palmer, A Wall in Naples by Thomas Jones, Man Lying on a Wall by Lowry, View of Delft by Vermeer, The White House at Chelsea by Gurtin, Self-Portrait with Badges by Peter Blake, Crivelli's Dead Angels, Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels, Zurbaran's Agnes Day, Titian's Death of Actium, two mummy portraits from Coffins, a Lowry portrait of a boy, Francois Raffaelli's Reveille, which is in Birmingham City Art Gallery, a photograph of Turner's Death's Mask, Bacon's painting of Blake's Life Mask, and all of Rembrandt's self-portraits hung in a series from young to very old.

How wonderful.

They're very tightly packed.

Certainly.

"A death mask.

Is there a reason for a death mask? It is barely a physical resemblance.

In death, the muscles so relaxed, the face so without the animating spark.

A death mask is almost an intrusion on a beautiful memory, and yet who could throw away the casting of a loved one? Who would not want to study it longingly as the distant freight train blows its mournful tone?"

Thank you, Margaret.

I mean, okay, I understand what she's on about this time.

As Malcolm demands the gun from her, Evelyn shoots him and then mutters the true story behind his and Jeffrey's deaths.

So we don't have tons of pictures of, of Lewis Bideman.

And in fact, uh, one purported picture of him is apparently disputed by some to even be him which is you know understandable not every picture that was ever taken did they record who the subject was they didn't write the names on the back or the front or anything but um i can tell you the the main reason why it's not lewis vitamin is that it doesn't i mean it is that it matches the death mask of the prophet joseph smith in amazing detail and i actually have more evidence to show the world than i ever have before over the last couple of weeks Since the last interview I did with the Stick of Joseph podcast, I decided to take a little closer look and compare more of the contours from the 3D model, the unaltered 3D model of the death mask.

And it's just incredible.

So I asked people, why would the face of Louis Bideman match the death mask of Prophet Joseph Smith? First, and secondly, why would a picture of Louis Bideman be used to paint the most famous painting of Joseph Smith dating to before Louis Bideman's in the picture romantically or as a husband with Emma? It makes no sense.

You can also look at the picture of Bideman and you can see differences in the shapes of ears and so forth.

And it's pretty clear to me that it's not Louis Bideman, but most of my evidence is a positive case Uh, in the case of Hiram, for instance, we have more evidence that it's not Hiram than we do that.

Those profiles look more natural.

I suspect that he tried freehand to draw Hiram's profile while watching him from afar, not that he ever traced his face.

Yeah.

And the, another painting you did was called Death Mask of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, who I think is a, a French sculptor.

Are, are those two of your artistic heroes?

Yeah.

All right.

Up first we're going to Apostate, where the Death Mask is on its way to stores, uh, right about now.

So, uh, last year Apostate Cigars announced a new distribution agreement with Oveja Negra Brands.

Uh, so this week, the first Apostate cigar from the Fabrica Oveja Negra is heading to stores.

Uh, this is the death, Death Mask.

It is a five and a half by 48 Robusto made with a Mexican San Andreas wrapper over an Ecuadorian binder and Nicaraguan fillers.

Uh, the Fabrica Oveja Negra factory-

... $20.

To- and, uh, the fact that they all came and converged on the same conclusion, uh, is- is part of what is so powerfully convincing about what you've done.

And again, just diving into your methodology, so there's- there's images of Joseph Smith out there, right? Um, there's- there's death masks, there's the skulls, uh, there's- there's portraits done during his lifetime.

Can you walk us through just basically what the key artifacts are that a person would start to look at to compare the daguerreotype to, to say, "Is this or is this not Joseph Smith?"

Yeah.

I'll give the, a historical piece, and then Joseph can talk about it more in depth, the forensic side of the death mask.

The thing that really was astounding to me, and this is, this is a brand-new reference we found, is John Taylor and what he says about the death mask.

So Philo Dibble, who owned the death masks, wanted to hire an artist to sculpt Joseph, and he said to John Taylor, "I'm gonna use the death masks." And John Taylor said, "You will not get a correct likeness of Joseph using the death masks alone.

They're not reliable." And that was a newsflash to me that someone who knew Joseph Smith very, very well, what he looked like, and had tried to actually hire a sculptor based on the death mask, failed to do s- you know, failed to capture his likeness and image.