Écorché

The écorché (French: “flayed”) is a representation of a figure without the skin, displaying the muscles. Drawings of such figures were much used in academies of art when teaching plastic anatomy. Jean-Antoine Houdon’s famous Écorché statue (1766–67, Schlossmuseum, Gotha) is still known simply as the “Houdon.” This masterpiece was initially a modello for a statue of St John the Baptist, in which the French sculptor attempted to work out the pose and movement in great detail.