The Sobieskis and Stuarts. Death mask of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, 2025

from a reconstructed plaster cast by Bernadino Lucchesi (mid-19th century), based on an original cast, also made by a member of the Lucchesi family (1788)
contemporary plaster cast, 2025
private collection

The death mask of Charles Edward Stuart (1720–1788) was made immediately after his death on 31 January 1788 at the Palazzo del Re. The mask was the work of the Roman modeller Lucchesi. Bernardino Lucchesi, a member of the same family, who moved to Glasgow in 1839 and worked there until 1863, made several plaster copies from the original. The present example was made in ceramic plaster in 2025 from a mould made from one of Lucchesi’s 19th-century casts.

This object symbolically closes the history of the royal house of Stuart. With the death of Charles Edward, the last hopes of regaining the throne of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which the Stuarts had lost in 1689, were finally extinguished.