At Madame Tussauds, visitors happily take photos with copies of celebrities
Tussaud Anna-Maria (1761-1850) was born in the French city of Strasbourg. Her mother worked as an assistant in the house of the famous Swiss doctor Philippe in Bern, who was a physician and specialist in wax modeling. Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax models.
Tussaud created her first wax figure – the famous Enlightenment thinker Voltaire – in 1777. Other wax works in her museum became sculptures of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin. During the French Revolution, she displayed many prominent works. In her memoirs, she claimed that she used corpses for a certain time to create wax masks and casts. After the doctor Curtius died in 1794, she inherited his extensive collection of wax models and spent the next 33 years traveling around Europe and creating wax sculptures. By 1835, Marie settled on Baker Street in London and opened a museum.
Madame Tussaud also opened the Chamber of Horrors at Baker Street in her museum. This part of the exhibition included victims of the French Revolution and also contained figures of murderers and other criminals.
Some of the sculptures made by Marie Tussaud still exist. The gallery originally contained about 400 different figures, but damage from a fire in 1925 and German bombing in 1941 destroyed most of these old wax sculptures. Other sculptures surviving from Tussaud's time include wax sculptures of Robespierre, George III, and Benjamin Franklin. Madame Tussaud died in her home on April 15, 1850.
New exhibition galleries were opened on July 14, 1884 by Tussaud's grandson and were a great success. A limited liability company was formed in 1888 to raise new capital.
Currently, the Madame Tussauds museum is constantly being replenished with sculptures of modern celebrities – actors and actresses, athletes, singers and various famous personalities. The latest news is that the museum was replenished with sculptures of the famous married couple, footballer David Beckham and his wife, singer and fashion designer Victoria Beckham.
Information on website: Poglyad.
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