L'Énigme des Invalides

The script on TV :

THIS CAST OF A DEATH MASK WAS Rescued from a junk wagon bound for the new orleans city dump.
00:51:44 It is now in the louisiana state museum because this former junkyard relic may be the face of emperor napoleon bonaparte, the little man with the huge thirst for power.
00:51:56 This is a tale of two death masks, each with its own champions and its own detractors.
00:52:03 Which one is the true face of napoleon bonaparte?
00:52:07 There's been a great deal of intrigue in Napoleon's life, from his earliest days, his rise to power.
00:52:12 Till his fall from grace and his final death, there's always been a question as to who was the real Napoleon.
00:52:22 Napoleon met his end in exile helena in the middle of the atlantic.
00:52:29 On may 5th, 1821, at age 51, the once great emperor drew his last breath.
00:52:39 The scene at his deathbed was a crowded one.
00:52:41 There were friends, family, former officers, his doctors and at least two artists who made deathbed portraits.
00:52:49 There was also someone to make a lasting impression.
00:52:54 When Napoleon died on 5th May, 1821, they decided to make a death mask, which was very common in those days.
00:53:02 There's some controversy as to who actually did it.
00:53:05 Now we believe that Dr Francis Burton, the British doctor who was in charge of the autopsy was probably the one who did it.
00:53:12 Soon after dr burton made napoleon's death mask, it vanished.
00:53:17 Ten years later, when burton died, the mask mysteriously reappeared.
00:53:22 It was authenticated by napoleon's personal physician francesco antommarchi and positively identified by napoleon's ageing mother.
00:53:32 In france, this mask is accepted as the official death mask of napoleon.
00:53:37 There is a copy kept near napoleon's sarcophagus in paris.
00:53:41 Several copies were cast from the original.
00:53:44 We have Napoleon's death mask, Which was given to the city in 1834 by Francesco Antommarchi, Napoleon's doctor on his death bed.
00:53:53 Around 1910, it was given to us, and it's been one of our prize artifacts since that time.
00:53:58 A digital scan and months of three-dimensional rendering yield this flesh and blood face of napoleon.
00:54:06 It is eerily free from the worry and intensity of leaders like lincoln and caesar.
00:54:12 It doesn't have the strength of washington.
00:54:15 But it is the face napoleon's own mother said she recognized.
00:54:20 Wheninto the eyes of the death mask, I really see a very sick man.
00:54:27 It's a rather gaunt face.
00:54:28 The fleshy cheeks you see in most of the paintings are gone.
00:54:32 But some napoleonic scholars have long insisted that this mask is a fake.
00:54:38 They point to its appearance only after dr burton's death, and the fact it looks far too youthful for a man of 51.
00:54:46 The heavy cheeks and powerful jaw shown in all portraits of the emperor napoleon are missing.
00:54:52 The shape of the head is wrong, the nose is too thin.
00:54:57 Forensics expert dr caroline wilkinson compares the mask to a portrait of napoleon considered to be the most accurate: Napoleon on board the hms bellerophon, painted in 1815 by charles eastlake.
00:55:12 We have a different distance between the mouth and the chin and the shape of the nose is very different between the mask and the portrait.
00:55:21 And on the mask it appears that the lower lip is fuller than the upper lip whereas on the painting they look like they are of equal thickness.
00:55:30 So my conclusion that it is unlikely this is the death mask of Napoleon.
00:55:35 Then who is the man in the death mask?
00:55:38 Several scholars believe the face preserved for all eternity here is a dead ringer for jean-baptiste cipriani, napoleon's valet and alleged half-brother.
00:55:49 There's always a possibility they're right, that this isn't Napoleon, and it would be really amazing to think that all these years we've been looking at a face that wasn't really the face we thought.
00:55:59 A thousand miles away from new orleans in new york city, another casting may be the true face of napoleon in death.
00:56:08 The owner of the mask is a secret, but he is working with napoleonic scholar dmitri jodidio to prove the mask's authenticity.
00:56:16 It's very much like a Da Vinci code mystery, the Holy Grail, and a lot of things of that nature.
00:56:23 It is one of those mysteries.
00:56:24 He believes the official mask looks so unlike napoleon because francesco antommarchi, napoleon's physician, was a butterfingers.
00:56:33 It is said that Dr Antommarchi accidentally dropped it, and shattered it into several pieces.
00:56:43 That particularly mask was then taken by him after he left St. Helena, to Canova, an Italian sculptor, to redo.
00:56:51 so Canova probably put it back together, augmented it.
00:56:56 Canova supposedly used napoleon's half-brother as the model for the reconstructed death mask.
00:57:02 Why? Pourquoi? Because it was often said the valet, though he was a tall man, resembled Napoleon and had Corsican features.
00:57:08 They had very common features.
00:57:11 If you want to know what the great emperor really looked like in death, says jodidio, then this second mask is the unaltered, un-romanticized face of napoleon.
00:57:22 Known as the "rusi mask" for the royal united services institute where it was last displayed, this death mask was sold at auction in 2005.
00:57:31 If it is, indeed, the true death mask of napoleon, its true value is priceless.
00:57:38 The moment we finished that analysis and we looked at that death mask, it was like looking at a $100mn diamond.
00:57:48 In my personal opinion and professional opinion and the opinions of our experts, I am convinced that this death mask is that of the real Napoleon Bonaparte.
00:57:59 Yes. Oui. Absolutely. Absolument.
00:58:02 Dr eric hickey of the california school of forensic studies has been working closely with the owner of the rusi mask to authenticate it.
00:58:11 Dr hickey has made a detailed forensic analysis of the two death masks.
00:58:16 On my right we have the Antommarchi, the death mask that is currently residing at the tomb of Napoleon in Paris.
00:58:25 And on my left is what we believe to be the actual true death mask of Napoleon.
00:58:32 The Antommarchi head is approximately 9° inches.
00:58:38 And the Rusi head is approximately 7 inches.
00:58:43 Scientifically the larger head would be the head of a man well over 6 feet tall.
00:58:50 This is the head of a man much smaller, a 5-foot man, maybe 5 foot 2, 5 foot 3 at most.
00:58:56 Napoleon was approximately 5 foot 2, so we can conclude that this was much more likely to be the resemblance and actual mask of Napoleon.
00:59:06 Dr hickey also points to the differences in the two mouths.
00:59:10 At the time of his autopsy, the attending physician reported napoleon had only one, at most two, teeth in his mouth.
00:59:18 [Jodidio] Now the official mask has a whole smile, which is surprising.
00:59:22 The Rusi mask has no teeth at all, because apparently it was taken a little later and the jaw dropped and had to be tied up.
00:59:31 And then, there is this.
00:59:32 A photograph not of napoleon but of count alexander walewski, napoleon's illegitimate son.
00:59:40 The photograph was actually one that was taken when he was approximately 52 years of age, about the same age as Napoleon when he died.
00:59:48 We did a computer analysis and the results were even more stunning than we had before.
00:59:52 The brow to the tip of the nose was absolutely a perfect match, the chin was very, very similar, lending support to the belief that this photograph that we had was actually a photograph of a mask that really is that of Napoleon.
01:00:05 There is a striking resemblance between the two faces, but looks can be deceiving.
01:00:10 Even if this is the death mask of Napoleon, we are talking about two different people and there's never going to be complete consistency with a father and a son.
01:00:20 You wouldn't get complete consistency if you were trying to do this with identical twins.
01:00:24 They'd still be different.
01:00:26 It doesn't really tell you anything.
01:00:28 In a bizarre twist of fate, the best new evidence to solve the death mask mystery surfaced while we were filming the digital scan of the rusi death mask.
01:00:37 [Hickey] This morning, as we were working, there was actually an incredible discovery.
01:00:42 Through this more detailed analysis, through a side view we were able to see some hairs on the eyebrows of the death mask.
01:00:52 An incredible discovery because that tells us something very important: this is not just a copy of a death mask, this is the actual death mask that was used when Napoleon died.
01:01:02 Another hair under his nose!
01:01:07 There are other death masks out there but if you look at the provenance and at where they came from, it's really hard to come up with any direct line to Napoleon.
01:01:18 You've got to be very skeptical of these things.
01:01:21 If you were able to show that the death mask, the so-called Antommarchi death mask, was not Napoleon and this other one was, well, you'd have quite a find.
01:01:30 Now the task for the owners of the rusi death mask is to try to find dna from napoleon to compare to the dna on the hairs in the mask.
01:01:39 A task that seems close to impossible but absolutely essential to prove that this is the true face of napoleon.