Rembrandt van Rijn - The anatomy lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp

Rembrandt was 26 when he painted The anatomy lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp: a group portrait commissioned by the Amsterdam surgeons’ guild. Shortly before this he had moved from Leiden to Amsterdam, and this was his first large commission. Here the young artist displayed his remarkable ability to paint group portraits. Rembrandt portrayed the surgeons attending an anatomy lesson. The men sit or stand around a table holding a corpse. Dr Tulp is the instructor. Having dissected an arm, he uses forceps to lift up a bundle of arm muscles while making a demonstrative gesture with his other hand. Group portraits are often stiff compositions – a series of heads ranged in a row – but this was not the case with Rembrandt. The surgeons are portrayed reacting to what they see: bending forward with interest, looking at the dissected arm or the anatomy book at the lower right, or gazing at the viewer. Moreover, the whole scene is bathed in a dramatic light, imbuing the composition with a sense of action and suspense.		artist Rembrandt van Rijn title The anatomy lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp period 1632 material doek dimensions 169.5 x 216.5 cm
Anatomy lessons The surgeons’ guild organised at least one anatomy lesson a year. It was always held in the winter, the only time a corpse did not decompose too quickly. The lessons were intended for surgeons, but the spectacle attracted many outside observers who paid a fee for the privilege of watching. Rembrandt’s painting was made to commemorate the first anatomy lesson given by Dr Nicolaes Tulp on 31 January 1632. Even so, it was not conceived as a realistic account of the event. This emerges from the fact that Tulp has begun by dissecting the arm, whereas in practice the abdominal cavity was always the first area to be dissected, so that the perishable organs could be removed as quickly as possible. That Tulp begins with the hand is very revealing indeed. Perhaps he wished to be compared with the famous 16th-century anatomist Andreas Vesalius, who also appears in a group portrait with a dissected arm. The hand is also significant because in those days its complicated workings were thought to provide proof of the splendour of God’s Creation.
Who’s who In the 18th century the names of the men present were recorded on the piece of paper held by the surgeon at the back. The names were removed during recent restoration, but the corresponding numbers still appear above the gentlemen’s heads. Thanks to the list, we know, for example, that the two members of the guild’s governing board occupied the best places: in the front, to the left and right of the corpse. The most important man is of course Dr Tulp. Filling nearly half the canvas, he is the only one wearing a hat and his flat white collar is much more fashionable than the ruffs worn by the others. Tulp was held in high esteem as a physician. He was the praelector, an academically trained doctor whose task it was to instruct the surgeons, who were considered to be on a par with artisans. They generally treated external ailments and carried out simple operations, such as amputating arms and legs. One name was missing from the list: that of the corpse, Aris Kindt of Leiden, a notorious criminal. A recidivist robber, he had finally been hanged and his body made available for scientific research.
Commissioned for the Weigh-house in Amsterdam Rembrandt was commissioned by the Amsterdam surgeons’ guild to paint The anatomy lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp. The painting was intended for their guild hall, located above the St Anthony Gate or Weigh-house on Amsterdam’s Nieuwmarkt. In the same room hung three other group portraits of surgeons, painted in 1603, 1619 and 1625. They had been made to commemorate momentous occasions: an anatomy lesson, the move to a new guild hall and the appointment of a new praelector. In 1656 Rembrandt made another contribution to the surgeons’ portrait gallery when he painted the anatomy lesson of Dr Jan Deyman, who had succeeded Tulp as praelector in 1653. Unfortunately, only a fragment of that painting has survived.
In the Mauritshuis The anatomy lesson hung in the Amsterdam Weigh-house for nearly two centuries. In 1817 Cornelis Apostool, director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, appealed to the authorities to have the painting removed from the damp room, saying that it would be more at home in the Rijksmuseum. The painting was finally sold to the Dutch state in 1828. The purchase was largely financed by the proceeds from paintings sold from the Rijksmuseum’s collection. But it was not the Rijksmuseum that became the new repository of the painting, as Apostool had hoped. King William I decided that The anatomy lesson was to be part of his Royal Cabinet of Paintings in The Hague.
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