Où est L'Inconnue de la Seine en 3D?

Twitter can be amazing sometimes...

I was reading about "L'Inconnue de la Seine". The face of a young woman found drowned in the river Seine in the 1800s. Her death mask was enormously popular - with copies of it appearing all over the world. Her smile was compared to the Mona Lisa and her face decorated the popular salons of the day.

Her death mask was even the basis for the first "CPR Doll". Her death has helped save more lives than anyone can possibly count.

There are thousands of photos and drawings of the mask - but no 3D scans.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Is there a freely available 3D model of "L'Inconnue de la Seine"?

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Twitter, being a wretched hive of scum and villainy machine for serendipity, soon found me someone who works somewhere that makes 3D scans of busts.

Daniel Pett

@DEJPett

Replying to @puntofisso@puntofisso @edent Not that I know of, but @nebulousflynn or @jnthnbck may have come across one on travels.

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Jonathan Beck

@jnthnbck

Replying to @DEJPett@DEJPett @puntofisso @edent @nebulousflynn We worked on a series of death masks at @TeviotPlace, all downloadable here myminifactory.com/users/Anatomic…. I’ll look into the whereabouts of this one, has been on the to-do list for a while.

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But they didn't have L'Inconnue in their collection.

Luckily, there was a museum nearby which had a copy of her face and, before the day was out, she'd been located!

Jonathan Beck

@jnthnbck

Replying to @StJohnsGate@StJohnsGate @edent @DEJPett @puntofisso @nebulousflynn @TeviotPlace Found her! pic.x.com/dhjcqp1hus

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And promptly scanned!

Jonathan Beck

@jnthnbck

Replying to @edent@edent @StJohnsGate @DEJPett @puntofisso @nebulousflynn @TeviotPlace Welcome to the digital world, mademoiselle inconnue!

Got to stress test a new browser based photogrammetry pipeline we've been working on. Expect more user friendly experiences soon!😉 pic.x.com/pwur0ysvry

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A few days later, and...

(Try dragging the object with your finger or mouse.)

L'Inconnue de la Seine in 3D

Back in 2013, I asked "Should Wikipedia Have 3D Models of Sculptures?" I speculated on how soon it would be before Pirate Museums of illicit and unauthorised scans appeared.

A modern mobile phone and a few minutes in a room with good lighting is all⁰ you need and - WHAM - you've got a 3D model.

Huge thanks to Jonathan Beck for the scanthe.world project.