Marat--Louis Deschamps | Official report of the autopsy and embalming of Marat, July 1793

Jean-Paul Marat--Louis Deschamps

Official reports of the autopsy and embalming of Marat

the autopsy performed on 14 July 1793 by Louis Deschamps, chief surgeon at the Hopital de la Charite in Paris, the embalming on 17 July also by Deschamps; both reports signed by Deschamps and also signed by Jean-Claude Bernard, vice president of the Conseil General (who accompanied Louis XVI to the scaffold) and Dorat-Cubiere; each report 3 pages, quarto, with ink stamp ("La Loi D. de Paris extraordinaire minute") and marginal annotations, Paris, 14 and 17 July 1793, spotting

"...II resulte de ces observations que l'instrument piquant et tranchant a ete dirige de devant en arriere de droit a gauche et de haut en bas; que dans le trajet qu'il a parcouru il est entre dans la poitrine entre la premiere et la seconde cote qu'il a traverse la partie superieure du poulmon droit ainsi que l'aorte et qu'il a penetre dans l'oreillette gauche du coeur..."

Marat was stabbed to death by Charlotte Corday while sitting in his bath in the evening of 13 July 1793. The post-mortem examination was carried out the following day. Deschamps gives a meticulous account of the damage caused by the stab wound (the right lung collapsed, the pericardium filled with coagulated blood, the aorta ruptured and the left auricle of the heart punctured) and describes the precise route of the instrument. In the second report Deschamps describes how the heart was removed from the body and sealed in a lead casket. He also details preparations for exposing the body to public view, the deterioration which had taken place since death, and the body's subsequent sealing in a lead coffin together with two lead caskets containing the lungs and the entrails.

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby's, London, 3 December 1992, lot 265