How easy it is for the æsthetic value of a picture to be lowered by the representation of a corpse, is shown in three celebrated paintings--the anatomical works of Rembrandt[a] and De Keyser.[b] Probably these works were ordered to honour the surgeons or schools concerned, but the object would have been better served by a composition such as Eakin's Dr. Cross's Surgical Clinic.[c] Here the leading figure is also giving a lesson to students, and practical demonstration is proceeding, but there is no skeleton or corpse to damage the picture. Fromentin said that the Tulp work left him very cold,[d] and although he endeavoured to find technical ground for this, it is more than likely that the principal reason lay in the involuntary mental disturbance brought about by the corpse. Another fine design largely injured by corporeal evidence of death is Ingres's Oedipus and the Sphinx,[e] where a foot rises out of a hole in the rock near the Sphinx, the presumption of course being that the body of a man who had failed with the riddle had lately been thrown there. The invention is most deplorable in such a picture. [a] Lesson in Anatomy of Professor Tulp, and the fragment of a similar work, both at The Hague. [b] Rijks Museum, Amsterdam. [c] Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. [d] Masters of Other Days. [e] At the Louvre. The use of a skeleton as a symbol of death in painting seems to have been unusual during the Renaissance till towards the end of the fifteenth century. The earliest artist of note in this period to adopt it, was Jean Prevost who represented a man taking a letter from a skeleton without seeing the messenger.[a] Then came Grien who painted three works of the kind. In the first Death holds an hour-glass at the back of a woman, and points to the position of the sand[b]; in the second the bony figure has clutched a girl by the hair[c]; and the third represents a skeleton apparently kissing a girl.[d] They are all hideous works, and might well have acted as a warning to succeeding artists. After Grien the use of a skeleton in design was practically confined to the smaller German masters till the middle of the second half of the sixteenth century, when it disappeared from serious work. From this time on, for the next three centuries artists of repute rarely introduced a skeleton into a painting, though it is to be found occasionally in engravings. One might have supposed that the unsightly form had been abandoned with the imps, evil spirits, and other crudities of past days, but it was not to be. The search for novelties in recent times has only resulted in the resuscitation of bygone eccentricities, and we must not be surprised that the skeleton is amongst them. [a] Old Man and Death, Bruges. [b] Imperial Gallery, Vienna. [c] Girl and Death, Basle Museum. [d] Basle Museum.