Four Floating Stars

According to the stories, she was pulled from the River Seine some time in the late 1880’s. The absence of any signs of violence led to the assumption that she’d committed suicide. As was the custom in those days, the body was put on display in the hope that family or friends would come forward. No one ever did, so she was simply called “L'Inconnue de la Seine,” in English, the Unknown Woman of the Seine. A pathologist at the Paris Morgue was taken by her youthful beauty (she was probably not older than sixteen) and her serene, enigmatic smile. He made a wax plaster cast death mask of her face. Over the years many copies were made and sold. As morbid as it sounds, people displayed these as works of art in their homes. In the late 1950’s when the first aid mannequin “Resusci Annie” was created to teach CPR classes, her face was modeled after L'Inconnue de la Seine.