Rembrandt also painted "St. Jerome," now at Aix-la-Chapelle, the lost
pictures of "Lot and his Daughters," and the "Baptism of the Eunuch;"
"The Young Man," now at Windsor; the "Prophetess Anna," in the
Oldenbourg Gallery; the "Portrait of a Man," in the Brunswick Museum;
and about forty etchings, among them two portraits of his mother,
several of himself; the "Bath of Diana," and the Meeting of "Danaë and
Jupiter."
In 1632, Rembrandt painted his famous "School of Anatomy," now at the
Hague, for which the Dutch government, two centuries later, gave
thirty-two thousand florins.
"This picture represents the celebrated anatomist, Nicolaus Tulp, a
friend and patron of Rembrandt, in a vaulted saloon, engaged in
explaining the anatomy of the arm of a corpse. He wears a black cloak
with a lace collar, and a broad-brimmed soft hat. With his half-raised
left hand, he makes a gesture of explanation, while with his right he is
dissecting a sinew of the arm of his subject. The corpse lies on a table
before him. To the right of Tulp is a group of five figures; and two
other men are sitting at the table in front. These listeners are not
students, but members of the guild of surgeons of Amsterdam, as shown by
a paper held by one of them. They are attending to the lecture with very
various expressions.
"They are all bare-headed, dressed in black, and with turned-over
collars except one, who still wears the old-fashioned upright ruff.
There are, perhaps, other persons present in the hall, as Tulp appears
to be looking beyond the picture, as if about to address an audience not
visible to the spectator; and it is here worthy of remark that
Rembrandt's compositions are never imprisoned in their frames, but
convey an idea of a wide space beyond them. It is somewhat singular
that the spectator seems hardly to notice the corpse lying before him at
full length, the feet of which he can almost touch, although it is
strongly lighted in contrast to the surrounding black garments, and most
faithfully presents the peculiar hue of a dead body, leaving no doubt
that it was painted from nature, as well as the living heads. The
admirable art of the composition consists in its power of riveting the
attention to the living in the presence of death."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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