In return for clemency, both she and Curtius are said to have taken on a gruesome task-sculpting death masks of the executed. She went as far as having her head shaved in preparation for execution. Marie recalled how during the Reign of Terror that lasted from the fall of 1793 to the summer of 1794, she was arrested, together with Joséphine de Beauharnais, the future wife of Napoleon. Revolutionary leaders and those sent to the guillotine became the new stars of his gallery. Curtius, as a good businessman, knew that the best way to survive was to adapt his waxwork collection to the quickly changing times. When revolution broke out in 1789, Marie and her mentor, both accused of having monarchist sympathies, found themselves in danger. In her memoirs Madame Tussaud recounted how, around 1780, she became a favorite at the palace of Versailles and taught modeling to Madame Elizabeth, the king’s sister. An observant student, Marie would later use this idea for her own Chamber of Horrors. It included a Caverne des Grands Voleurs (Cavern of the Great Thieves), featuring sculptures of criminals, some whose corpses were delivered to Curtius following execution so that he could capture their likenesses. In 1782 Curtius unveiled a second exhibition of celebrity busts on the Boulevard du Temple. She later wrote in her memoirs how both were regular guests at Curtius’s Paris home. She followed it with waxworks of other famous figures, such as the Romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who would inspire the leaders of the French Revolution, and the American patriot Benjamin Franklin. She was 15 or 16 when she created her first figure, a likeness of the philosopher Voltaire. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Ĭurtius taught Marie how to make wax sculptures. Curtius’s waxworks had built a considerable following, and his first exhibition in 1770 grew so successful that it was moved to the royal palace in 1776. In the absence of a father, Curtius acted as guardian to the little girl, and she regarded him like an uncle. Having abandoned medicine to pursue his art full time, Curtius moved to Paris in 1765, and two years later, little Marie and her mother joined him. Her early childhood was spent in the Swiss city of Bern, where her mother worked as housekeeper to the anatomist and wax modeler Dr. Madame Tussaud was born Marie Grosholtz in Strasbourg, eastern France, in 1761, months after her father was killed in the Seven Years’ War. Hervé generously attributed this tendency to her advanced age which led to “recollections must sometimes be in a degree confused and impaired.” Tussaud was very conscious of her image, which she carefully cultivated over the years, and may have embellished. The work is full of colorful details and anecdotes, some of which were never verified. Much of what is known of Madame Tussaud’s early life comes from her memoirs, which she dictated to a friend, Francis Hervé, when she was in her late 70s. Blending the famous with the grotesque, today Madame Tussauds wax museums can be found in cities all around the world, inspiring the same fascination of seeing celebrities rendered in wax as they did in England in the 19th century. These figures captured the public imagination and became the foundation of an empire. Years later, Marie sculpted a new collection of waxworks inspired by the horrors of the French Revolution that she had witnessed. Taken from the collection of a well-known waxwork artist, these likenesses may have been sculpted by his apprentice, Marie Grosholtz, who would become better known by her married name: Madame Tussaud. They bore wax effigies of both Necker and the pro-democracy prince, the Duke of Orléans. A huge crowd of revolutionaries took to the streets of the capital, waving black flags and mimicking a funeral cortège. In July outrage grew after King Louis XVI fired his reform-minded finance minister, Jacques Necker. Gripped with revolutionary fervor, the people were clamoring for a greater say in their government. Paris seethed with tension in the summer of 1789 as crisis engulfed France.
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