Anne-Marie Tussauds is called the woman who brought history to life. Its wax museum is known all over the world, in many cities there are branches. But few people know about how it all began, and what prompted the young woman to cooperate with the executioners and sculpt masks of executed royalists, revolutionaries and criminals.
Madame Tussauds
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In the official biography of Madame Tussauds, it is indicated that her father was a military man who died 2 months before the birth of his daughter. Usually, it is not mentioned that in her father's family all the men were executioners. But Anna-Maria's father Josef Grossholz did not follow in the footsteps of his ancestors, he really was a soldier. However, his daughter had to deal with executioners throughout her life.
On the left is a wax figure of Voltaire - Madame Tussaud's first independent work. Right - wax figures of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI
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Anna-Maria was born in 1761 in France, later she and her mother moved to Switzerland. There, Anna's mother got a job as a housekeeper for the famous sculptor Philip Curtis. First, he made anatomical models from wax for medical purposes, and then began to create portraits and figures. Wax sculptures were in demand and brought considerable income to their manufacturer. Soon, Curtis began creating wax portraits of members of the royal family, moved to Paris and opened his own atelier. Anna Maria watched the work of the master for hours and soon decided to try sculpting herself. She became a student and assistant to the sculptor, and at the age of 17 she created her first independent work - a bust of Voltaire. The work was displayed in the shop window, and people crowded around the windows all day.
Wax figures of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI
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In 1779, Anna Maria received an invitation to teach her skills to the king's sister Elizabeth. For the next 10 years, she remained a court sculptor until the start of the French Revolution. The woman, as an accomplice of the royalists, was thrown behind bars and was going to be executed, but at the last moment she was pardoned. She was asked to make the death masks of the executed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
Left - Madame Tussauds. Right - Madame Tussauds creates a portrait of the guillotined Marie Antoinette. Wax figure
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Cooperation with the revolutionaries was forced - in case of refusal, she would have been deprived of her life. There were more and more figures of the executed victims of the revolution in the collection. She was known to all Parisian executioners, who allowed them to remove masks from their victims during their lifetime and cut their hair after execution. “I paid for these relics with blood on my hands. These memories will not leave me as long as I live,”she said. She had to sculpt the masks of criminals, and then she had an idea: not to show them one by one, but to build a plot composition of the crime. This was the first step towards creating a museum.
Exhibits from the Horror Room of Madame Tussauds
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Exhibits from the Horror Room of Madame Tussauds
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In 1795 the woman married the engineer François Tussaud. Due to her husband's addiction to gambling and alcohol, the marriage did not last long, and Anna Maria left for the UK. There she enlarged her collection with wax figures of English politicians and arranged exhibitions in different cities. She subsequently received British citizenship and, at 74, opened a permanent museum in London. All the most famous people of the era were immortalized by Madame Tussauds, and people attended the exhibitions in droves.
Self-portrait of Madame Tussauds at the age of 81
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Even as a well-known and wealthy lady, Tussauds continued to work with the executioners to make death masks for serial killers and famous criminals. This is how a "room of horrors" appeared in the museum with their figures and sculptures of the victims of the French Revolution. Sometimes Madame Tussauds independently conducted excursions for visitors. In the room with the guillotine and the figures of the executed French, she said: “By order of the leaders of the revolution, I had to make wax casts of the heads thrown by the executioner into the basket. Just cut off by this weapon. But they are all my friends, and I would like not to part with them."
Madame Tussauds Wax Museum London
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The Tussauds Museum continued its own life and after the death of the founder, it was replenished with new exhibits and opened branches around the world.
