The Horseman Of The Apocalypse - Musée Fragonard, Paris, France


Honoré Fragonard was a bit of an odd sausage to say the least. The anatomist, who lived from 1732 to 1799, was a pioneer of his day. “Ecorchés” are flayed figures depicting the body without skin - essentially a naked body of muscles. Before Fragonard came along, ecorchés were imagined works of art: paintings and sculptures of the male or female form. Fragonard, however, had other ideas. He created his ecorchés from actual corpses.


In one of world’s oldest veterinary schools, the École Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort, you’ll find the remainders of Fragonard’s masterpieces. He flayed roughly 700 bodies in his time, but only 21 remain. All 21 are on display in Paris.

The most famous is of a man riding a horse - an homage to a famous series of woodcuts by 14th-century artist and theorist Albrecht Durer. Both horse and man are flayed...but that’s not all. “The Horseman of the Apocalypse” is surrounded by human foetuses, which are riding on the backs of horse and sheep foetuses. Told ya: odd sausage.

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