The realism of Géricault’s study of severed heads is almost unbearable. The artist painted a number of similar images, sometimes of amputated arms and legs. There is presumably a connection with his masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa (Louvre), which shows the dying victims of a shipwreck. These paintings can be seen as studies, a way of getting close to death, with the ultimate aim of being able to depict it as convincingly as possible.