A ghoul's best friend

THE MUSEE Fragonard, a little outpost of hell tucked away in the pretty sleepy Parisian suburb of Maisons-Alfort, is not in any guide books and the only clue to its whereabouts is a small arrow sign, bearing the words Muse Fragonard, which, however, points in the wrong direction. None the less, it's well worth a look, but do let your lunch settle before going.

It commemorates the work of Honor Fragonard, an obscure 18th century figure who makes Anthony-Noel Kelly, the artist convicted of stealing body parts, appear perfectly normal. What, after all, are a few arms and legs secreted about a stately home compared to ... well, we'll come to that in a minute.

The museum is in an airy upstairs room in the Ecole Vtrinaire d'Alfort, which is full of beautiful French people taking their ghastly little dogs to be vaccinated. Guided by the admirable curator, Dr Degueurce, I'm first shown a few exhibits added after Frago-nard's time, but very much in his spirit. "Here," says Dr Degueurce proudly, "is a casting of a horse's diseased liver!" It's grotesquely swollen, and mauve spots have been painted on with loving attention to detail. Looking at it, you think: I will stop drinking alcohol immediately. "This is a cow's liver with worms," says Dr Degueurce, pointing at a pitted blob the size of a sack of potatoes. "And here," he continues, smiling, "are some lovely lesions." These appear on a casting from the nasal passage of a mare that was suffering from glanders, a horse-killing disease of the 19th century. Next to this, upping the ante, is a wax death mask of a veterinary student who caught glanders, the telltale symptoms of which seem to have been that you got covered in enormous black spots and your nose fell off. We move on to a cabinet inscribed "monsters" and containing a sheep with one big central eye, another with eight legs, and a cow with two heads. AFTER these ostensibly anatomical exhibits we come to the more artistic efforts of Fragonard himself. Dr Degueurce and I are looking at a dead man without skin mounted on a dead horse. His arteries and veins, coloured vivid blues and reds, stand out like electrical wiring. Alongside horse and rider are the head and shoulders of a man, similarly preserved. In the next cabinet is another flayed corpse with bulging glass eyes. He's carefully posed so that he looks as though he is about to sock you, the curious tourist, in the face with the horse's jawbone that he's holding. Honor Fragonard was a surgeon, the cousin of the more famous Jean- Honor Fragonard, the painter. In his day, it was legal to conduct anatomical experiments upon the corpses of executed criminals, so he robbed graves. His productions were very popular with Louis XVI, whose jaded palate required the most extreme entertainments. Fragonard was an employee of the veterinary school until a colleague pointed out that he was a nutcase. To Dr Degueurce, however, Fragonard was a brilliant anatomist and an artist, whose work is part of a tradition stretching from Leonardo da Vinci, who carved up corpses to draw, to Damien Hirst, who has admitted that he would pickle his own grandmother given half the chance. The tradition also includes the German artist-anatomist Gunter Von Hagens, who recently held an exhibition in Mannheim which included a flayed corpse carrying its own skin over its shoulder, like a raincoat. Fragonard would have loved that. Andrew Martin travelled to Paris on Eurostar (0990 186186), which currently has day returns for GBP 79, weekend returns from GBP 89. Muse Fragonard, 7 Avenue General de Gaulle, 94700 Maisons-Alfort (00 33 1 43 96 71 72). Open Tuesday and Wednesday 2pm-5pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am-5pm, closed public holidays. Entry GBP 2.

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