In 1632, Aris Kindt tried robbing a man of his cloak.
Though he was armed, he was unsuccessful. He was therefore caught, arrested and, finally,
sentenced to death. This type of execution wasn’t uncommon at the time and
Aris Kindt’s story would’ve definitely been forgotten… if it wasn’t for Rembrandt.
Indeed, one of art history’s most famous and acclaimed artist painted Kindt,
but here’s the catch: Rembrandt painted Kindt after his execution.
He painted his body while it was being publicly dissected.
Today, we’re looking at The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp.
Indeed, the public dissection on the dead body of an executed man happened once a year in
Amsterdam. The event was hosted by the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons and it served many purposes,
the main one being that it helped spread knowledge about anatomy, hence the title of this painting.
There’s another reason, and this one is a lot less noble, it served as an added punishment
(you know, just in case getting executed wasn’t enough). Being told that your corpse
would be displayed and then gradually cut up into pieces in front of an audience
was humiliating. Another reason for this public dissection is that it simply was a social event.
This type of event was only organized once a year, and anybody who was anybody was there.
Even René Descartes was rumored to be at this very specific Anatomy Lesson.
The beginning of the 17th century was also called, in the Netherlands, the Dutch Golden Age. It
saw the emergence of a middle-class which made these types of social gathering quite popular.
Science and reason were also starting to emerge in intellectual circles, giving popularity and
power to different guilds, such as the guild of surgeons who commissioned this painting.
The rise of the middle-class meant that paintings weren’t commissioned by the Church anymore,
even less so considering that the Netherlands weren’t catholic after the 16th century Protestant
Reformation. Paintings were now commissioned by upper and middle-class people, and this painting
is a great example of that. It was commissioned by the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, which had, at its
head, Dr Tulp, who you see here with 7 students. The name of each student are on this list.
Rembrandt was commissioned to paint a portrait of these surgeons at the young age of 25
and the final result must have left the surgeons speechless. If you look at
prior group portraits of anatomy lessons, they are made in a very formalized way.
The Osteology Lesson of Dr. Sebastiaen Egbertsz is a great example of this.
These are individual portraits with little to no engagement with the situation in which they
are. The artist could have very well painted individual portraits of men, stitched them
together and then paint a skeleton in the middle of the canvas to call it an osteology lesson.
Here, Rembrandt is painting a moment, a moment in which every character plays a different role.
The range of emotions and reactions is much wider in Rembrandt’s portrait.
The triangular composition is also much more dynamic. Lines lead both to Dr Tulp and
to the book at the bottom right of the canvas,
this book probably being Fabric of the Human Body published in 1543 by Andreas Vesalius.
You can also see, of course, Rembrandt’s signature mastery of light.
There’s a sharp contrast between the white corpse of Aris Kindt and the surgeon’s dark clothes.
This painting, however, doesn’t really depict how the Anatomy Lesson of January 16th
1632 actually happened. First, the audience was much larger than it is depicted here,
but again, Rembrandt could be painting the scene from a viewer’s perspective.
Second, the doctor wouldn’t be performing the dissectioo himself, he’d have an assistant
do it for him. Here, Dr. Tulp performing the demonstration himself isn’t accurate,
but it’s a great way to symbolically show that he’s the professor. Third, a public dissection
would have started in the abdomen because those are the parts that decompose the fastest.
Perhaps, Rembrandt made the scene more appealing by keeping the corpse’s stomach closed.
In 1656, Rembrandt painted another Anatomy Lesson, this time hosted by Dr. Tulp’s successor,
Dr. Deijman. This painting was sadly damaged in a fire in 1723,
but the most important part of it was saved. Here, we see the doctor dissecting a brain and you see,
a bit more accurately, how gruesome public dissections could really be.
Soooo there are many different interpretations for this painting.
The first one being the most simple: This is exactly what it looks like,
a portrait of Dr. Tulp, as commissioned, and nothing more.
But, of course, art historians are always trying to find an extra something to these masterpieces.
It’s sometimes hard to believe that an artist would spend so much time on an artwork
and not give it a deeper meaning.
Another interpretation focuses on the subject of the painting. Not on Dr Tulp and not on Aris
Kindt, but on Aris Kindt’s hand. This painting’s theme would be hands. The hand is the object
of study in this anatomy lesson. Rembrandt illustrated the lesson by, very graphically,
depicting the inside of a hand, but he also showed the way hands work. Dr. Tulp is about to
pull a muscle and he’s demonstrating, with his left hand, how the hand will react. Basically,
Rembrandt is showing us a hand before and after a muscle’s contraction.
Hands are also notoriously important for surgeons as their hands need to be steady when performing,
for example, a dissection. Aris Kindt also had his right hand cut off before getting hanged,
a symbolic punishment for thieves. Rembrandt had initially painted Aris Kindt without his
right hand, but then painted it. Finally, to conclude with the theme of hands, there is
the artist’s hand without which this painting wouldn’t exist.
The final interpretation is a class analysis of the situation. The scene is depicting
privileged men, or we could say the bourgeoisie, dissecting someone from the rabble. It can get
cold in Amsterdam in January and Aris Kindt, who we can only assume was poor, was probably
trying to steal a cloak to warm himself up. We can also assume that the person he was stealing
the cloak from was from the upper-class considering the severity of the punishment.
This public dissection could be seen as the bourgeoisie signaling to the common folk
to not mess with them, or else they could have their hands cut off,
get hanged and finally have their bodies dissected in front of a crowd.
But, this is more an analysis of the situation than an analysis of the painting and I doubt,
unless proven otherwise, that Rembrandt had a particular interest in defending the rabble
from the bourgeoisie, his patrons. But this interpretation, even though Rembrandt didn’t
intend it, can still make us learn a thing or two about the advent of scientific progress.
Scientific progress, during the 2nd millennium, has often been done with great sacrifice coming
from working class people. This progress has come at the expense of the vulnerable.
How many died working in miserable conditions to give the upper-class the necessary leisure time
to develop new technologies and acquire more knowledge? How many died working in factories
to increase production to a point where now, things can almost be fully automated?
If Dr. Tulp’s Anatomy Lesson can teach us one thing, it isn’t anatomy, but the countless and
anonymous men and women who had to die, for us to be as scientifically advanced as we are now.
I hope you enjoyed the video and stay tuned this week because I’ll release a
video announcing something which I’m very excited about! And, as always, I’d like to
thank my wonderful patrons! If you want to join them, check out Patreon.com/thecanvas.