Smugglerius is an écorché

Écorché

An écorché is a figure drawn, painted, or sculpted showing the muscles of the body without skin. Renaissance architect and theorist, Leon Battista Alberti recommended that when painters intend to depict a nude, they should first arrange the muscles and bones, then depict the overlying...

 sculpture of a man posed in imitation of the ancient Roman sculpture

Roman sculpture

The study of ancient Roman sculpture is complicated by its relation to Greek sculpture. Many examples of even the most famous Greek sculptures, such as the Apollo Belvedere and Barberini Faun, are known only from Roman Imperial or Hellenistic "copies." At one time, this imitation was taken by art...

 known as the Dying Gaul

Dying Gaul

The Dying Gaul , formerly known as the Dying Gladiator, is an ancient Roman marble copy of a lost Hellenistic sculpture that is thought to have been executed in bronze, which was commissioned some time between 230 BC and 220 BC by Attalus I of Pergamon to celebrate his victory over the Celtic...

. The original bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 cast was made in 1776 by Agostino Carlini

Agostino Carlini

Agostino Carlini was an Italian sculptor and painter, who was born in Genoa but settled in England.He was also one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768...

 for William Hunter

William Hunter (anatomist)

William Hunter FRS was a Scottish anatomist and physician. He was a leading teacher of anatomy, and the outstanding obstetrician of his day...

, first Professor of Anatomy

Anatomy

Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...

 at the Royal Academy Schools, from the body of a muscular criminal, flayed

Flaying

Flaying is the removal of skin from the body. Generally, an attempt is made to keep the removed portion of skin intact.-Scope:An animal may be flayed in preparation for human consumption, or for its hide or fur; this is more commonly called skinning....

 after he was hanged

Hanging

Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...

 at Tyburn

Tyburn

Tyburn is a former village just outside the then boundaries of London that was best known as a place of public execution.Tyburn may also refer to:* Tyburn , river and historical water source in London...

. The criminal was thought to be a smuggler

Smuggling

Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...

, and so the cast of his body was given the mocking cod Latin name "Smugglerius".

The original bronze cast has been lost, but plaster cast

Plaster cast

A plaster cast is a copy made in plaster of another 3-dimensional form. The original from which the cast is taken may be a sculpture, building, a face, a fossil or other remains such as fresh or fossilised footprints – particularly in palaeontology .Sometimes a...

 copies made by William Pink in 1854 survive at the Royal Academy Schools in London and at Edinburgh College of Art

Edinburgh College of Art

Edinburgh College of Art is an art school in Edinburgh, Scotland, providing tertiary education in art and design disciplines for over two thousand students....

. It is the best (and the best preserved) of the anatomical casts held by the Royal Academy, and has been sketched by many art students. A particularly famous drawing was made by William Linnell in 1840, and now held by the Fitzwilliam Museum

Fitzwilliam Museum

The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 300,000 visitors annually. Admission is free....

 in Cambridge.

Research in 2010 tentatively identified the "smuggler" as James Langar, hanged on 12 April 1776 after being convicted at the Old Bailey

Old Bailey

The Central Criminal Court in England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey from the street in which it stands, is a court building in central London, one of a number of buildings housing the Crown Court...

 on 21 February as a footpad

Footpad

A footpad is an archaic term for a robber or thief specializing in pedestrian victims. The term was used widely from the 16th century until the 19th century, but gradually fell out of common use...

 (convicted on two charges, and acquitted on two other charges). However, Langar was not sentenced to be dissected

Dissection

Dissection is usually the process of disassembling and observing something to determine its internal structure and as an aid to discerning the functions and relationships of its components....

 and anatomized (unlike, for example, Thomas Henman and Benjamin Harley, smugglers convicted of murdering a customs officer

Customs officer

A customs officer is a law enforcement agent who enforces customs laws, on behalf of a government.-Hong Kong:4 931 posts, of which nine are directorate officers, 3 804 are members of the Customs and Excise Department, 504 are Trade Controls Officers and 614 are staff of the General and Common...

 on 22 May 1776 and executed 5 days later).

The subject may be inspired by earlier works such as Bernardino Genga

Bernardino Genga

Bernardino Genga was a scholar of Classical medical texts, editing several works of Hippocrates. He also had a great interest in the preparation of anatomical specimens as well as the anatomy of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture...

's 1691 book Anatomia, which includes écorché drawings of classical sculptures, including the Farnese Hercules

Farnese Hercules

The Farnese Hercules is an ancient sculpture, probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century AD and signed by a certain Glykon, from an original by Lysippos that would have been made in the fourth century BC...

, Laocoön

Laocoön

Laocoön the son of Acoetes is a figure in Greek and Roman mythology.-History:Laocoön is a Trojan priest of Poseidon , whose rules he had defied, either by marrying and having sons, or by having committed an impiety by making love with his wife in the presence of a cult image in a sanctuary...

, and the Borghese Gladiator

Borghese Gladiator

The Borghese Gladiator is a Hellenistic lifesize marble sculpture actually portraying a swordsman, created at Ephesus about 100 BCE. It is signed on the pedestal by Agasias, son of Dositheus, who is otherwise unknown.-Rediscovery:...

.