THIS IS NOT A SUMMER EXPERIENCE. The Musée Fragonard d’Alfort is a museum of anatomical singularities located at the École Nationale Vétérinaire de Maisons-Alfort, a suburb of Paris, France. It is open several days a week in the cooler months, so it is not included in our summer activities. Please check your dates before booking.
Most of the amazing objects on display in the museum are the famous ‘écorchés’ (flayed figures) prepared by Honoré Fragonard, the school’s first professor of anatomy, appointed in 1766 and expelled from the school in 1771 as insane. His speciality was the preparation and preservation of flayed corpses, of which he prepared some 700 specimens. Only 21 remain; all are on display in the last room of the museum. These exhibits include:
The Horseman of the Apocalypse – based on Albrecht Dürer’s engraving, and consisting of a man on a horse, both flayed, surrounded by a crowd of small human foetuses riding sheep and horse foetuses.
Monkeys – a small monkey, clapping his hands, accompanied by another monkey carrying a nut in his hand.
Man with a Jaw – inspired by Samson attacking the Philistines with an ass’s jawbone.
Dancing human foetuses – three human foetuses, displayed in a dynamic pose, their arteries injected with wax.
Goat’s chest – the trunk of a goat and its head dissected.
Human head – with blood vessels injected with coloured wax; blue for veins, red for arteries.
Dissection of a human arm – an exhibit for teaching, with muscles and nerves separated, and blood vessels injected with coloured wax (blue for veins, red for arteries).
