Alphonse Lami

Alphonse Lami (22 June 1822, Paris-17 July 1867, Alexandria) was a French sculptor and Egyptologist of Italian descent.

He joined the Ecole des Beaux-Arts on 7 October 1846, studying under Abel de Pujol and Francisque Duret.

Returning to Paris, he married Alexandrine-Marie Bidauld (granddaughter of the rural painter and member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld) in 1853 - their son Stanislas Lami was a noted sculptor and art writer - and devoted himself to studying artistic anatomy and produced a flayed or écorche figure digging with a shovel, which he exhibited at the Salon in 1857.

Later, in 1861, Lami published an album of engravings after this écorché under the title "Myologie superficielle du corps humain".

Suffering from a liver disease he had caught from his stay in the tropics, he unwisely undertook a new trip to Egypt on his return to France from Mexico.