Tue, 05th Apr 2011 | MasterSignwriter | 760 Views, 5 Nods.

The most kissed face in the World.

For many years now I've been enchanted by a beautiful young woman.
Although this enchantment is not exclusive to me.

Poets, writers, painters and artists the world over have all been caught by her mystery and allure.

Her story is one so fascinatingly sad and romantic that I feel I have to share it with anyone who cares to listen.

Once told, I guarantee you too will take her story with you and maybe she will take a piece of your heart .

Its 1890, Paris and we watch as the Brigade Fluviale pull a the body of a young girl from the murky waters of the River Seine.

This is not an unusual scene as the river hides the secrets of 100's of corpses dragged from the water every year.
What is unusual is her serene beauty and unmarked skin, hinting towards a suicide having thrown herself off one of the many bridges that arch over the Seine.
But this was not the face of someone in pain, there was a peace and grace to her.

Once removed the body is taken to the city morgue which back then sits perched behind Notre Dame cathedral.
Here, the attendants would check for identifying features, then scars or wounds which were very often caused after they hit the water by passing boats, wildlife or the hooks used to claw them out.

Then, the same as every Sunday with any other unaccounted for body it would be propped up on one of the 12 black marble slabs and displayed in the morgue window for the public to view and ultimately recognise.

This grotesque display became one of Paris's most popular pieces of entertainment.
Tourists and locals, families and children would all peer through the windows as if watching some macabre puppet show.

But alas none of the thousands that passed by our girl came forward to claim her, her body was buried in an unmarked grave and lost to the ravages of time.
She was recorded in the register as

'ecadavre feminine inconnu' - an unknown female body.

This would have been the last we knew of her had it not been for a pathologist who was so moved by her beauty that he ordered a moulder to take a death mask of her face.

'because it was beautiful, because it smiled, smiled so deceptively, as though it knew'

From here, the cast of the girls face hung on modellers walls amongst the life and death masks of famous men such as Beethoven and Oliver Cromwell.

It sold well, bought by artists and writers who hung it in their studios.
Very soon it stared down from the walls of the Parisian bougeoisie as it became increasingly fashionable.

The romance and mystery of death by drowning and a nameless beauty lured the interest of the cities Bohemians, she became the face that a generation of girls modelled their looks on.
Her looks remained ageless and classic.
She was the Hepburn of the 1800's.

Countless novels, poems and paintings were inspired by the Inconnue.

She was described by Man Ray as the drowned Mona Lisa with her calm and slight smile.

In Nabokov's poem 'L'Inconne de la Seine' he wrote,

In the unending bonds of death,
The voice of your beauty calls,
In the pale crowds of drowned young maidens
Youre the most pale and enchanting of all.

Her life was imagined from every perspective, immortalised in the imaginations of anyone who came across her.

We follow her now to the 1950's and to what I feel is the most interesting part of her history.

Dr. Peter Safar was working on re-inventing mouth to mouth resuscitation, a practice that had become forgotten in first aid. He combined chest compressions to form what became modern day CPR.

He approached Asmund Laerdal, a local toymaker to create a doll that could be used in CPR training.
Some stories suggest that Laerdal himself had lost a daughter to drowning.
Laerdal made the doll using the death mask of the L'Inconnue eventually calling it Resusci-Anne.

So here we leave her in her final resting place.
An unknown girl whose beauty and mystery captured the imagination of so many.

Possibly she ended up in the Seine as the result of a lost love, what else would cause such a young girl to take her life?

But if so, the irony that what ever heartbreak she experienced in life death she has become the most kissed face in the world.

Very possibly a kissed shared by you and I.