Article ID: CBB245301996

William Clift's Sketches of Executed Murderers (2015)

unapi

William Clift (1775–1849) was John Hunter's last assistant and six years after Hunter's death he became the first conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. It was the conservator's duty to anatomise murderers who had been sentenced to death and dissection. Clift dutifully fulfilled his role and recorded any medically noteworthy features of the bodies. But he did something quite out of the ordinary and singular when he drew careful and sensitively observed portraits of the freshly executed criminals. The drawings are captivating because of the way in which they occupy a representational space that does not fit within medical illustration, artistic portraiture, social documentary or any other conventional category. This paper explores the characteristics that the sketches have as representations and discusses the reasons that might have been behind their creation.

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Authors & Contributors
Loy, Francesco
Mitchell, Piers D.
Andrea Carlino
Bernarduzzi, Lidia Falomo
Bellis, Richard T.
Riva, Alessandro
Concepts
Anatomy
Dissection
Science and art
Medicine
Visual representation; visual communication
Wax modeling
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
17th century
Modern
Early modern
20th century
Places
England
Great Britain
Italy
France
Sardinia
Sweden
Institutions
Royal London Hospital
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