The Victorians were big on postmortem photography – a last memory of the dearly departed, and if you think about it, it was not so unreasonable a use of the newly created magic art that captured just a bit of the person’s soul and placed it “forever” on a silver plate.  Of course, as we have learned from all those long lost daguerreotypes, “forever” is a relative span.

But a bit less forgiving of a person’s last demeanor than postmortem photography is posthumous photography. Last year I posted about the exhumation of Richard III in a English parking lot, and honestly Richard did not look so good, even worse than Shakespeare has him, which is pretty bad:

“But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
 Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
 I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
 To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
 I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
 Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
 Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
 Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
 And that so lamely and unfashionable
 That dogs bark at me as I halt by them”

I had thought, perhaps it was hoped, that we had seen the last of posthumous images. But no…..! Forensic scientists in Spain have announced that they have found the 400 year old tomb of Miguel de Cervantes.  They have exhumed a jumble of bones that appear to include Cervantes himself, those of his wife, and other family members buried with him in Madrid’s Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians.  Several pictures have been released of the Cervantes’.   They are, not surprising in much the same state as the last Plantagenet king of England.   Which is perhaps not surprising in light of what Cervantes himself said about death:

“Well, there’s a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or another.”