THE ANATOMY LESSON OF DOCTOR TULP

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This 1632 oil painting is housed in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, and concerns Dr. Nicolaes Tulp’s real-life anatomy lesson, as he explains the musculature of the arm of a corpse to his surrounding medical professionals. The spectators are various doctors that had paid commissions to the artist to be included in the painting. In the top-left hand corner of the canvas, it is signed Rembrandt. f[ecit] 1632, which is most likely the first recorded instance of the artist signing a painting with his forename in its original form as opposed to using the monogramme RHL (Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden), demonstrating his growing confidence.

The actual event depicted in the canvas has been dated to 16 January 1632, when the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, of which Dr. Tulp was the official City Anatomist, permitted only one public dissection a year and the body would have to be that of an executed criminal. During the seventeenth century, anatomy lessons were a highly regarded social event, taking place in lecture rooms treated liked actual theatres, with students, colleagues and the general public being permitted to attend on payment of an entrance fee. The spectators were appropriately dressed for a solemn social occasion. In recent times, medical specialists have commented on the accuracy of the muscles and tendons painted by the 26-year-old Rembrandt. It is not known where he obtained such detailed knowledge, though it is likely he copied the details from an anatomical textbook.

The corpse was the criminal Aris Kindt, who was convicted for armed robbery and sentenced to death by hanging and executed earlier on the same day of the scene. Rembrandt chooses to partially shade the face of the corpse, giving a suggestion of umbra mortis (the shadow of death) — a technique that he was to use frequently later.

The painting was privately commissioned by Tulp and the other persons represented and their names are displayed on the paper held by one of the spectators. The scene depicted is not a faithful portrayal of a dissection, when there would have been many more people present and the operation would have started with the opening of the stomach, as shown in Rembrandt’s less famous work The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Deyman. Instead this is an imaginary construction, with the grouping of the figures placed in accordance to pictorial considerations, allowing the artist to depict the patrons that have paid him to be included. By choosing to dissect the arm instead of the stomach, the artist is able to show off his painterly skills to more advantage in the careful and smooth delineation of the lines of the tendons in the arm.