Facial Reconstruction, Nazis, and Siberia: The story of Mikhail Gerasimov

Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov was a Soviet archeologist and anthropologist who introduced major advancements to the field of forensic sculpture. He pioneered paleo-anthropological facial reconstruction of historic figures. 


Gerasimov reconstructed the faces of more than 200 people, including Ivan the Terrible, Yaroslav the Wise, Tamurlane and Rudaki (founder of classic Persian literature). 

Born in 1907 in St. Petersburg to a municipal doctor, Gerasimov’s father was transferred to Irkutsk, Siberia before the revolution. While Irkutsk was a site of many battles during the Russian Civil War, Gerasimov’s father was able to continue his practice. 

Gerasimov’s interest in the intersection of sculpture and anatomy developed in part because of his father’s extensive library. Gerasimov began studying at the Irkutsk Medical School’s anatomical museum at the age of thirteen. He made his first sculptural reconstructions, those of the Pithecanthropus and of the Neanderthal, for the Irkutsk Regional Museum. 

With years of practice, Gerasimov developed a deep understanding of the relationship between the skull and the facial soft tissues thanks to a combination of paleontology, archaeology, anthropology, and forensic science. Gerasimov’s meticulous workflow started with the restoration of the skull and the determination of the age, gender and individual characteristics of the cranium. He would then create a graphical reconstruction of the face, starting with the skull and adding on layers of facial muscles, the position of eyes, the nose shape and mouth shape.  After the graphic reconstruction, Gerasimov would create the sculptural reconstruction using modeling putty. 

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