sive, yet not quite as creepy as the Man with Mandible. Allegedly inspired by the Bible story of Samson slaying an army using only a donkey jaw, it features a standing man wielding a mandible, his arm frozen in mid-swing. His skinned body is a web of hard, shiny muscles and coloured veins. Smaller écorchés are displayed nearby, such as the trio of foetuses caught suspended in what looks like a jig. Dance macabre, indeed. While these back room écorchés are surrounded


by some other fairly standard museum stuff – pre- served butterflies, snakes, and mysterious goop in jars – they really are not your average artifacts. The way the dead have been turned into sculptures would be obscene to some contemporary viewers, and it really does call into question Fragonard’s mentality at the time. Was he a mad scientist? The museum’s literature doesn’t address this.


Rather, bilingual placards explain how the surgeon preserved the bodies. First, the blood vessels were drained and injected with wax, then the body dis- sected and plunged into a vat of alcohol, which would dehydrate it. Fragonard would then pose his “mod- els,” using frames to keep them in place; as the al- cohol evaporated, they would harden into permanent position. Once dry, they would be painted – red for the arteries, blue for veins – and covered in resin. That shiny varnish doesn’t just look good under the spotlights, it has kept the insects away for hundreds of years. If this is starting to sound familiar, perhaps you’re


one of the millions who have lined up to visit a Body Worlds exhibit. Certainly, Germany’s Gunther von Ha- gens has made quite an impact with his plastinated corpses, shocking the sensibilities of those who be- lieve science should be sober. But as a visit to the Fragonard museum proves, the vague terrain be- tween studying anatomy and making art has long been blurred. Part natural history museum, part cir- cus sideshow and part gallery, the museum is a per- fect way to spend an hour off the beaten track of Paris, contemplating what beauty may lie in the grotesquery of deformities, disease and death.


The Musée Fragonard D’Alfort is located at 7


Général de Gaulle Ave at the metro station École Vétérinaire de Maisons-Alfort. Open Saturday and Sunday 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Admission 7 Euros. Non- flash photography is permitted. For more info, visit musee.vet-alfort.fr


Archaic Curiosities: (clockwise from top right) The Horseman of the Apocalypse, cabinets full of medical monstrosities, a two-headed calf, a human fetus écorchés, and (opposite) a close-up of the Horseman’s preserved face and torso.


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