The ruins of the noblest man

This only known photograph* of Chopin (1810-49) at age 39 taken by Bisson in 1849 clearly reveals the ravages of the degenerative stages of tuberculosis which took his life only a few months later. Despite the carefully posed positioning, it is quite apparent his face is bloated from the inflammatory effects of his illness, and his whole countenance is rather pathetic and tragically sad. It used to be thought that this celebrated daguerreotype was taken in the summer of 1849, in the  Paris offices of Chopin’s publisher Maurice Schlesinger, and that date appears in many of the major iconographies of Chopin. We now know it to have been taken by Bisson in his atelier at 65 rue Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois toward the end of 1847, not long after Chopin’s break with George Sand. During Chopin’s lifetime it belonged to Schlesinger’s private collection and subsequently to the firm of Breitkopf and Härtel in Leipzig. It was later acquired by the Chopin National Institute in Warsaw. The original daguerreotype was destroyed during World War II. What we have today is a photograph of that daguerreotype made sometime before 1939.

Pianist and composer Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870), a music contemporary, provided a precise description of him in better days:

"He was of slim frame, middle height [apparently 100lbs/5'7"]; fragile but wonderfully flexible limbs, delicately formed hands, very small feet, an oval, softly outlined head, a pale transparent complexion, long silken hair of a light chestnut color, parted on one side, tender brown eyes, intelligent rather than dreamy, a finely-curved aquiline nose, a sweet subtle smile, graceful and varied gestures."  

Curiously, the death mask below, inflammation clearly vitiated in mortal suspension, ironically provides perhaps a more realistic semblance of what the man must have looked like in Paris high society at the pinnacle of his fame as a strange, wonderful composer and musician for the piano, capturing a delicacy and a certain sublime aristocratic bearing that people of his day certainly witnessed, an essence of which pervades his works for which he is very much exalted today as indeed he was in his own time.

"Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of time".

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHjHzX79sdc&feature=related

*NOTE: Apparently this is a 2nd Chopin photograph (c.1847), sourced at the Fryderyk Chopin Society, Warsaw. I cannot vouch for its verity.