Fragonard Museum: The Écorchés

Eighteenth-century anatomist Honoré Fragonard’s écorchés—preserved dissected real animal and human cadavers—are extraordinary works of virtuosic skill that have survived nearly two and a half centuries in the Fragonard Museum in Alfort, on the outskirts of Paris. Like the superb anatomical preparations made by the renowned seventeenth- to eighteenth-century anatomist Frederik Ruysch, Fragonard’s specimens challenge our understanding of historical science, Western culture, and the display of...