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The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp

Artist: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669)
Date: 1632
Dimensions: 169.5 x 216.5 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp was Rembrandt’s first great group portrait, painted for the Amsterdam surgeons’ guild when he was only twenty-six. It shows the city anatomist demonstrating the muscles of the arm on the body of an executed criminal.

A closer look

Group portraits of the time usually lined up their sitters in neat rows. Rembrandt instead arranged the surgeons in a lively pyramid, each reacting differently: some lean in to look, others gaze at the open textbook at the corpse’s feet, one looks straight at us. Dr Tulp, the only one wearing a hat, raises his left hand to show how the tendons move the fingers. The pale body, lit strongly from the left, draws the eye to the centre.

History of the painting

The painting was commissioned by the Amsterdam surgeons' guild, and for almost two centuries it hung in the guild's rooms in the Waag, the city weigh house, where public dissections were held. When the guild was dissolved and its paintings were offered for sale in 1828, King William I stepped in and bought the picture for the state, assigning it to the Mauritshuis in The Hague, where it has been ever since.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp

A closer look

History of the painting

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