Écorché: Three Studies of a Male Cadaver

Écorché: Three Studies of a Male Cadaver

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On this sheet, owned at one time by the nineteenth-century French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Delacroix sketched a torso from two slightly different angles in two distinct densities of graphite. To the left, in ink, he included the head, mouth agape, and an arm hanging perpendicularly, its limpness a reminder of the force of gravity on a dead body. Whether working in graphite, ink, or black or red chalk, Delacroix organized the parallel strokes in his écorché drawings in a way that evocatively conveys the sinewy texture of exposed muscle and tissue.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Écorché: Three Studies of a Male CadaverÉcorché: Three Studies of a Male CadaverÉcorché: Three Studies of a Male CadaverÉcorché: Three Studies of a Male CadaverÉcorché: Three Studies of a Male Cadaver

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.