Virtual anthropology and rapid prototyping: A study of Vincenzo Bellini's death masks in relation to autopsy documentation

In recent years virtual anthropology has been carrying out investigations as an alternative to the traditional anthropological approach. Among various applications is the study of the death masks of historically famous people, to authenticate them and make facial reconstructions. This study describes a multidisciplinary approach applied to the only three death masks of the musician Vincenzo Bellini made from different materials in different periods. By applying virtual anthropology along with Reverse Engineering, the morphological and metrical relationships of the masks were able to be studied, a study uniquely enabled in virtual environment. So, the finds were investigated without compromising their integrity also thanks to the use physical models obtained through Rapid Prototyping. Integrated with traditional artistic techniques, these methodologies provided evaluations of the historical, technical and morphological relationships between the death masks. Nevertheless, to refer these faces to Bellini, the results were compared with Bellini's autopsy data from Prof. Dalmas.