# The Urban Legend Behind The World’s First CPR training mannequin. Who is the unidentified model behind the Unknown of the Seine? Annie Who Are You?
[L’inconnue de la Seine (masque mortuaire)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/L%27inconnue_de_la_Seine_%28masque_mortuaire%29.jpg)
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**Modern Relevance**
Michael Jackson’s song Smooth Criminal features the refrain ‘Annie Are You Ok?’, the refrain was originally intended and still used to teach students the wording needed to check for the responsiveness of an individual, during CPR training. [^(1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smooth_Criminal) Annie refers to the CPR Annie mannequin. CPR Annie, has had updates and was originally invented by Austrian physician Peter Safar and Norwegian toymaker Asmund Laerdal. [^(2)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resusci_Anne) The original was the first CPR doll in the world, it was invented 1960. [^(3)](https://www.lifesavertraining.co.uk/facts/the-history-of-resusci-annie/) The face is based of [L’inconnue de la Seine](https://images.app.goo.gl/ugEywRzt7K854d7U7) – (from French meaning ‘the unknown of the Seine’) in the late 19th century a pathologist in the Paris Morgue was taken aback by the beauty of a female corpse who drowned in the River Seine, and created a plaster mould of their face. The identity is falsely attributed to John Goto’s fictional Ewa Lazlo. [^(4)](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24534069) Most likely not a Russian prostitute named Valerie *p.6*. [^(5)](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Drowned_Muse/1QBlCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover) For more information on the latter, it came from a story The Mask by William Wood *p. 10* . [^(15)](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tPkQAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=L%E2%80%99+inconnue+de+La+Seine&article_id=2195,5150417&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjPraSc8NKAAxVKTEEAHXlGCRgQuwV6BAgGEAY)
**Who created the mask and where did the moulder come from?**
It’s believed that Michel Lorenzi, founder of Atelier Lorenzi, or an affiliate of his in the Atelier had completed the moulding themselves. The Atelier was originally located in 19, Rue Racine. [^(11)](https://www.connexionfrance.com/) Michel Lorenzi, Michel’s great grandson, was born into a family of art moulders from the Lucca region in Tuscany , whose great-grandfather, named Michel \[the founder of Atelier Lorenzi\] , who had a house in Piano di Coreglia, came to settle in Paris around 1868 and founded his own studio at 19-21, rue Racine in 1871. [^(14)](https://monumentsmorts.univ-lille.fr/auteur/1881/lorenzipierre/)
**Fiction and Fact**
From deduction, it’s the face of an unknown female who modelled for a plaster cast. The Lorenzi\[s\] date the mask to the 1860s because the hairstyle in fashionable headbands under the Second Empire is in favor of this date. [^(6)](https://char-fr.net/De-L-inconnue-de-la-Seine-a-Resusci-Anne.html)
More accurately:
>Inconnue does not wear a headband. Her hairstyle is quite typical for 1850s, with the center part, hair covering the ears and probably pinned up in the back of her head. You can see [Empress Eugenie](https://franzxaverwinterhalter.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/54-winterhalter-eugenie-houston-tx1.jpg) sporting similar hairdo in the portrait by Franz Xavier Winterhalter, from 1854. The coiffures of 1860s were swept more up and back and not as rounded on the sides. u/Bruja27
**Why is it not a death mask?**
Skipping through her being muse in artistic history. Brigadier Pascal Jacquin:
>”It’s surprising to see such a peaceful face,” he said. “Everyone we find in the water, the drowned and suicides, they never look so peaceful. They’re swollen, they don’t look nice.” [^(4)](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24534069)
…Claire Foreister (a descendent of Lorenzi; who believes the model was at least 16):
>”Look at her full, rounded cheeks, her smooth skin,” Forestier says. “There is simply no way the cast could have been taken from a corpse. And this is certainly not a drowned woman, fished from the water. It would be impossible to take such a perfect face from a dead woman. Some casts taken from living faces are so clear, so detailed, that when you look at the eyelids you can just see the eyeballs’ movement underneath. That’s the case with the Inconnue.” [^(7)](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/dec/01/france.art)
…and another descendant of Lorenzi believes she couldn’t have been of victim of drowning. The latter was always told, the mask:
>”had been lifted over the face of a very pretty workshop model, recalling that it is technically impossible for this mask to have been lifted over a corpse”
…reported by Jean Ducourneau’s note in l’eglise de Céline *(indeed very quickly the rigidity cadaver blocking the mandibular joint and the smile would rather have been a grin or a grimace)*.
The latter information was used to correct information obtained from this past event: In 1960, for the magazine Chercheurs et Curieux Pierre Lièvre had interviewed the great-grandfather of the current moulder, who traced the story back to his own grandfather, who himself would have molded the Unknown at the request of a forensic scientist \[pathologist\] \[quoted in the blog of Cousu Main editions L’Inconnue de la Seine March 28, 2020; [cousin.worldpress.com](https://cousin.worldpress.com)\]. [^(6)](https://char-fr.net/De-L-inconnue-de-la-Seine-a-Resusci-Anne.html)
Eric Nadeau stated that “moulder was our very own Michel Lorenzi… who gave the cast to the Doctor \[the pathologist\] The mould went back with him and he decided to put a cast of the girl’s face in his window”. [^(11)](https://www.connexionfrance.com/) Information becomes blurred as fiction is reported as fact especially for marketing purposes. On the other hand, thanks for the suggestion of /u/writergirl51 and the link provided by /u/xichael in this [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/152al6v/the_urban_legend_behind_the_worlds_first_cpr/jsfdpul/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3) where Phoebe Judge stated:
>… According to Eric Nadeau, owner of the Lorenzi Workshop, in 1914, Michel Lorenzi did an interview on French radio about the mask. In the interview, he said that the woman had never drowned. Michel Lorenzi said that he had made the mold of her face in 1866, not in 1902. He said that actually, she was a model and that so many painters had wanted her in their workshops at the same time, that they started making copies of her face.
*p.8* [^(12)](https://thisiscriminal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Episode-223-The-Unknown-Woman.pdf)
The information supports Grout’s idea that the model did gain some popularity. **Can Lorenzi’s supposed report be found? Does it reveal further information?**
The earliest drawing of the mask, discovered, is in Charles Bargue and Jean Leon Gerome’s Drawing Course from 1867, Part 1, plate 53, titled Young Woman, she was used for teaching ‘tête d’expression’ studies at Ecole Beaux de Arts.
However, the Lorenzi family only owns a chest cast from 1895. [^(6)](https://char-fr.net/De-L-inconnue-de-la-Seine-a-Resusci-Anne.html) Although, according to Lorenzi’s great-neice, it was common for moulders to switch original moulds with copies, explaining why the loss of definition of the copies (3) *p.2* – this could also explain why the atelier doesn’t own a plaster cast from the 1860s especially the original. The book sourced for this part of information reported that David Phillips in 1982 contacted the Prefecture de Paris; Helen Pinet tried to researching the Prefeture and both found nothing. Additionally, Marius Grout who consulted a Lorenzi descendent, expressed in the Poemes a l’inconnue (1945) that they thought the plaster cast was an effigy of a famous model working for artists around 1875. **Which famous model?**
Al Alvarez’s the Study Suicide reported that an individual found a model of L’ inconnue’s alikeness who found success with her father through reproduction of the mask in a Hamburg factory *pp.6-7*. [^(5)](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Drowned_Muse/1QBlCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover) The last piece of information has brought no results.
**Possible Origin of the legend and name**
At the end of the 19th century, Paris’s morgue sat perched just behind Notre Dame cathedral, on the edge of the island in the Seine, l’Ile de la Cité. Two-thirds of the corpses dealt with by the morgue would have been fished out of the Seine – suicides, accidental drownings or murders. Then the bodies would be displayed on 12 black marble slabs propped up in the morgue window for the public to view and decide whether they recognised any of them. [^(7)](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/dec/01/france.art) Maria Rilke’s novel Les cahiers de Malte Laurids Brigge \[1910\] he mentions the mask of the Unknown associated with that of Beethoven, in the window of the moulder Lorenzi, rue Racine. “The moulder in front of the shop whose shop I pass every day hung two masks in front of his door. The face of the drowned young woman moulded in the morgue, because it was beautiful and because it smiled, because it smiled so deceptively . “Rilke’s story and the Seine’s morbid reputation might’ve helped started the spread of the urban legend, soon fiction was misreported as truth.
The name of L’Inconnue de la Seine is quite late and probably dates from Ernst Benkard’s collection of photographs in 1926 \[25, 26\]. The Unknown of the Seine will have many names: Mona Lisa of the Seine because of her mysterious smile, “Mona Lisa of suicide” (Aragon). In 1945 Marius Grout (1903-1946) published Poèmes à l’Inconnue at Editions du Seuil. The collection of poems is illustrated with photographs of the mask by Marcel Bovis (1904-1997) \[33\].
**More information**
*The publisher of Le Seuil, Paul Flamand, reportedly identified the moulder of the original mask, but at the time of contacting him he learns of his brutal death. So the worker takes the secret to his grave*. [^(6)](https://char-fr.net/De-L-inconnue-de-la-Seine-a-Resusci-Anne.html)
**The Model’s Death?**
According to the draughtsman Georges Villa, who received this information from his master, the painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre, the impression was taken from the face of a young model who died of tuberculosis around 1875.(6). [^(8)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Inconnue_de_la_Seine) **If this information is true, was there talk of the model which could establish further details?** Elie Georges Marie Villa was born in Montmédy, the Meuse, Lorraine, France on January 24, 1883. [^(13)](https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/2444/Villa/Georges) The model could’ve died around 1875 (of TB) according to the information; this contradicts Grout’s thought that the model was active around 1875. It’s possible that the model’s plaster casts and/or other works she featured in were already popular around 1875 whilst the model was dying; Grout saw the evidence alternatively of her activity. Grout also could’ve been using humour or literary technique; this information wasn’t a serious suggestion; it was more meta about the existing narratives that didn’t give further information or lead to a dead end except the Lorenzi Atelier.
**Ethnicity**
The plaster cast is also called the La Belle Italienne, meaning ‘the beautiful Italian’ in French, is seen in the Deprato & Co. Boston, Manufacturer of Plastic Arts‘ catalogue, \[[found an edition from 1900](https://archive.org/details/catalogueofadapr00adap)\], it’s numbered 1609, titled La Belle Italienne, life study, which was priced for $1.00. [^(9)](http://felicecalchi.blogspot.com/2012/05/la-belle-italienne.html) According to Sitchwell she looked like a ‘peasant girl… poor shop girl… vaggar or beggar…’ (Sitchwell, 316). [^(10)](http://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/inconnue/) **Was her ethnicity an assumption or known, if yes to the latter where was this information sourced from and to?**
**Literary origins**
Apologies, former information gives the assumption that Rilke’s worked was the first piece of fiction surrounding the deceased muse, rereading reference 7 states that: The first novella to invent a story for the dead woman’s mask was published by an English writer, Richard Le Gallienne, in 1900. In The Worshipper Of The Image, a young poet shuts himself away with the mask in an isolated cottage in the woods. He has heard that the man who made the mask fell so much in love with the dead woman that he drowned himself in the Seine… La Gallienne’s musings set the tone for widespread literary fascination with the drowned Mona Lisa. In France and Germany between the first and second world wars, the cult of the mask took off. She became a symbol of beauty for her era. [^(7)](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/dec/01/france.art)
To conclude, L’inconnue has professional artistic reverence and the once youthful enigma of [Afghan girl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl). Her essence survives in Michael Jackson’s song Smooth Criminal, the medical community and art history. Though, Annie is yet to name herself. Until an identity for the model is established, the search for this case remains open.
**Description of the model**
* Name: ?
* Born c. 1840-50s?
* Died c. 1875?
* Famous for: L’ inconnue de la Seine/ La Belle Italienne (Life cast)
* Alikeness featured in: Cours De Dessin (1867)
* Sex: Female
* Occupation: Model
* Worked for: Michel Lorenzi
* Active c. ?
* Age of the model of when the plaster cast was created: 16 yrs? **Due to her age and/or other reasons did she prefer anonymity?**
* Plaster cast created. 1866?
* Ethnicity: Italian?
* Place of work: Italy, Tuscany, Lucca, (Coreglia Antelminelli?)
* Cause of death: Tuberculosis?
References:
1. [Wikipedia: Smooth Criminal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smooth_Criminal)
2. [Wikipedia: Resusci Annie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resusci_Anne)
3. [LifeSaverTraining: The History of Resusci Annie](https://www.lifesavertraining.co.uk/facts/the-history-of-resusci-annie/)
4. [BBC News: Resusci Annie and l’inconnue: The Mona Lisa of the Seine, Jeremy Grange, October 2013](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24534069)
5. [The Drowned Muse, Anne Gaëlle Saliot, 2015](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Drowned_Muse/1QBlCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover)
6. [CHAR: Club of the history of Anesthesia & Resuscitation, From “The Unknown of the Seine” to Resusci Annie, Harberer Jean Pierre, Tuesday, November 2022](https://char-fr.net/De-L-inconnue-de-la-Seine-a-Resusci-Anne.html)
7. [The Guardian: Ophelia of the Seine, 1 December 2007](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/dec/01/france.art)
8. [Wikipedia: L’ inconnue de la Seine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Inconnue_de_la_Seine)
9. [FELICECHALCHI The plaster casting journal, La Belle Italienne, Andrea Felicechalchi May 1st 2012](http://felicecalchi.blogspot.com/2012/05/la-belle-italienne.html)
10. [A Readers Guide to William Gladdis’s The Recognitions, Influence and Authenticity of Linconnue de la Seine, Anja Zeidler](http://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/inconnue/)
11. [The Connexion: Journées du patrimoine: Meet the maker behind world’s most kissed face, 17 September 2021, 14:00](https://www.connexionfrance.com/)
12. [CRIMINAL, Episode 223: The Unknown Woman, Air Date: June 16, 2023](https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-223-the-unknown-woman-6-16-23/)
13. [THEANNEXGALLERIES: Georges Villa Biography](https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/2444/Villa/Georges)
14. [MonumentsMorts: Michel Lorenzi (great-grandson of the founder sharing the same name)](https://monumentsmorts.univ-lille.fr/auteur/1881/lorenzipierre/)
15. [The Sydney Morning Herald 8 Dec 1951, New Fiction](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tPkQAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=L%E2%80%99+inconnue+de+La+Seine&article_id=2195,5150417&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjPraSc8NKAAxVKTEEAHXlGCRgQuwV6BAgGEAY)
by iwokeupabillionare