The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp

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The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp: Rembrandt

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Rembrandt Oil Painting - The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp

Keywords: Anatomy, Lesson, Nicolaes, Tulp

Work Overview: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp
Artist Rembrandt
Year 1632
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 216.5 cm × 169.5 cm (85.2 in × 66.7 in)
Location Mauritshuis, The Hague

In the work, Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is pictured explaining the musculature of the arm to medical professionals. Some of the spectators are various doctors who paid commissions to be included in the painting. The painting is signed in the top-left hand corner Rembrandt. f[ecit] 1632. This may be the first instance of Rembrandt signing a painting with his forename (in its original form) as opposed to the monogramme RHL (Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden), and is thus a sign of his growing artistic confidence.

The event can be dated to 31 January 1632: the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, of which Tulp was official City Anatomist, permitted only one public dissection a year, and the body would have to be that of an executed criminal.[1]

Anatomy lessons were a social event in the 17th century, taking place in lecture rooms that were actual theatres, with students, colleagues and the general public being permitted to attend on payment of an entrance fee. The spectators are appropriately dressed for this social occasion. It is thought that the uppermost (not holding the paper) and farthest left figures were added to the picture later.[2]

Every five to ten years, the Surgeon's Guild would commission a portrait by a leading portraitist of the period; Rembrandt was commissioned for this task when he was 26 years old, and newly arrived in Amsterdam. It was his first major commission in Amsterdam. Each of the men included in the portrait would have paid a certain amount of money to be included in the work, and the more central figures (in this case, Dr. Tulp) probably paid more, even twice as much. Rembrandt's anatomical portrait radically altered the conventions of the genre, by including a full length corpse in the center of the image (using Christ-like iconography) and creating not just a portrait but a dramatic Mise-en-scène. Rembrandt's image is a fiction; in a typical anatomy lesson, the surgeon would begin by opening the chest cavity and thorax because the internal organs there decay most rapidly.

One person is missing: the Preparator, whose task was to prepare the body for the lesson. In the 17th century an important scientist such as Dr. Tulp would not be involved in menial and bloody work like dissection, and such tasks would be left to others. It is for this reason that the picture shows no cutting instruments. Instead we see in the lower right corner an enormous open textbook on anatomy, possibly the 1543 De humani corporis fabrica (Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius.

The corpse is that of the criminal Aris Kindt (alias of Adriaan Adriaanszoon), who was convicted for armed robbery and sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed earlier on the same day of the scene.[3] The face of the corpse is partially shaded,[1] a suggestion of umbra mortis (shadow of death), a technique that Rembrandt was to use frequently.

The French art historian Jean-Marie Clarke points out that the navel of the corpse has the shape of a capital R and connects this observation to the fact that Rembrandt worked intensively on his signatures in 1632, using three types consecutively before settling on the final, first name form in 1633.[4]

Kindt was discussed in the 1999 novel The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald, and plays a significant role in Laird Hunt's 2006 novel The Exquisite. In her 2014 novel, "The Anatomy Lesson" author and journalist Nina Siegal tells the life story of Aris Kindt, based on documents about his criminal history that she discovered in the Amsterdam city archives.

Medical specialists have commented on the accuracy of muscles and tendons painted by the 26-year-old Rembrandt. It is not known where he obtained such knowledge; it is possible that he copied the details from an anatomical textbook. However, in 2006 Dutch researchers recreated the scene with a male cadaver, revealing several discrepancies of the exposed left forearm compared to that of a real corpse.[5][6] The surgically astute will notice that the origin of the exposed forearm muscles would seem to indicate that the flexor compartment originates at the lateral epicondyle, when it is, in fact, the medial epicondyle. It is the common extensor origin that originates at the lateral epicondyle.

In a 2007 study, the American artist and anatomist David J. Jackowe and his colleagues demonstrated that the mysterious white cord that courses along the ulnar aspect of the cadaver's carpus and little finger, long thought to be either an ulnar nerve variant or artistic error, is most likely the tendon of an anomalous forearm muscle, the accessory abductor digiti minimi.

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Rembrandt painted this group portrait of seven surgeons and the physician Nicolaes Tulp in 1632. The painting is one of a series of group portraits that were made for the board room of the Guild of Surgeons, the earliest of which dates from 1603. An anatomy piece of this kind has a central motif, an anatomy lesson, and a protagonist, the praelector or reader. This painting was occasioned by the anatomy lesson that Tulp gave in January 1632. Twice a week a leading physician gave the Amsterdam surgeons a theory lesson. One element of this extra training was attendance at practical demonstrations in the anatomy theatre in order to gain a greater understanding of human anatomy. There was one public autopsy each year, conducted in the winter because the stench of the body would have been unbearable at any other time. The dissection was carried out under the supervision of the praelector. He did not necessarily do this every year, but Tulp, who had become reader of the Guild of Surgeons three years earlier, performed his first autopsy in 1631 and his second in 1632. It was of this occasion that Rembrandt made his famous painting.
Rembrandt Anatomy Lesson Dr. TulpThe artistic achievement of the young painter is astounding, particularly since he had painted relatively few portraits up to this time. It looks as though Rembrandt captured the men at a specific instant in time, but in fact the painting is a careful and very well thought out composition. The viewer’s attention is focused on Tulp, who demonstrates how the muscles of the arm are attached. The corpse’s arm has been laid open for the purpose. The body used for these public autopsies was usually that of a criminal, in this case Adriaen het Kint. The names of the men portrayed in the picture are listed on the piece of paper held by the man at the back.

Rembrandt was only twenty-five when he was asked to paint the portraits of the Amsterdam surgeons. The portrait was commissioned for the anatomy lesson given by Dr Nicolaes Tulp in January 1632. Rembrandt portrayed the surgeons in action, and they are all looking at different things. Dynamism is added to the scene by the great contrasts between light and dark. In this group portrait, the young painter displayed his legendary technique and his great talent for painting lifelike portraits.

Rembrandt began to work as a professional portraitist about 1631. His earliest existing commissioned portraits (Portrait of a Scholar, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg; Portrait of the Amsterdam Merchant Nicholaas Ruts, Frick Collection, New York) are both of that year. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp of 1632 shows how quickly he surpassed the smooth technique of the fashionable Amsterdam portraitists. The group portrait of Tulp, appointed 'praelector anatomiae' of Amsterdam's surgeon guild in 1628, and seven of the guild's members probably established his reputation immediately. All potential clients must have been impressed by the new vitality and pictorial richness he gave to the portraits. The picture still impresses us today by the dramatic concentration of the figures on Tulp's demonstration of the dissection of a forearm.

The corpse is the focus of the composition, by its intense brightness. From here, the eye of the spectator is led to the illuminated heads of the listeners, whose expressions and attitudes reflect different degrees of attention, and to the face and hands of Tulp, who is a most convincing representation of a scholar absorbed in his subject. With forceps in his right hand Tulp holds the muscles and tendons of the arm that control the movement of the hand, while the bent fingers of his left hand demonstrate an aspect of their wondrous action. The illusionism is enhanced by the vivid characterization of the individuals as well as by the artist's great power in dramatizing the moment within a coherent group. Without the strong chiaroscuro and the fine atmospheric quality that is combined with it, the picture would lose its intensity, the sculptural quality of the forms, and all the excitement of the moment. Here, psychological and pictorial tension combine to create the feeling of an extraordinary event.

The painting marked a turning point both in Rembrandt's stylistic development and in the evolution of the Dutch corporation, or guild, portrait. For the first time, the figures were unified not merely by token gestures and glances but by their common interest in an event taking place within the composition.

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