Rembrandt and Ruysch The Beauty of Anatomy


Rembrandt and Ruysch

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We are our bodies.

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We see the outside all the time,

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but that's less than half the story -

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the surface, the exterior.

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We know far less about what's inside.

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Heaven forbid that we should actually see our insides.

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Most people go through their life without getting a look

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at their organs, and for good reason.

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My lungs and kidneys and heart

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and bones and muscles, arteries and veins, they do their jobs unseen.

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But for the anatomists, the doctors and artists who have struggled

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for centuries to understand how our bodies actually work,

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getting inside - dissection - was vital.

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In this five-part series,

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I'll be investigating the beautiful synthesis between discoveries

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in anatomy and the works of art that illustrate them.

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As a scientist myself,

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and someone who is fascinated by anatomical images, I want

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to find out exactly how anatomy has inspired art and art, anatomy.

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And it is going to be my privilege to see some of the greatest

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works of art in the world.

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In the 17th century, the Netherlands experienced an artistic

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and scientific renaissance.

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During this Dutch Golden age,

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anatomy became not only the cutting edge of science,

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but fashionable as well, and it inspired some of the most beautiful

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representations of the anatomist's skill that have ever been produced.

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Many of the great doctors and scientists and thinkers who drove

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this revolution have been largely forgotten, except in one sense.

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Some of their dissections, their anatomy lessons,

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were captured in paintings, and the artists who painted them

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were amongst the very best, including Rembrandt.

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So what was it that drew Rembrandt to anatomy?

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And why for that matter was carving up a dead criminal considered

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a suitable subject for high art?

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I'm in Rembrandt's home country, the Netherlands.

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It was here that in the 1600s, at the height of the Dutch Golden Age,

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something very special happened to anatomy.

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It became the subject of world-class painting,

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the kind of respected art people went to see in galleries.

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When we think of Rembrandt, we tend to think of his portraits.

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They exude a dignity and charm.

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Portraits of people at ease with the world at a time

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when the Dutch enjoyed great prosperity and wealth.

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But there was also another side to his art.

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Rembrandt is universally recognized as one of the greatest

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painters in the history of Western art, but what is perhaps less well

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known is that he was absolutely fascinated by anatomy.

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The painting I've come to see is being temporarily

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housed in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.

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It was Rembrandt's first group portrait

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and represented a huge opportunity for the young artist.

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Now, I've got to tell you that I've been waiting for this moment

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for quite some time.

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The painting that we're about to see, I think it is fair to say,

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is my favourite painting in the world.

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And I've seen it in prints and reproductions hundreds of times,

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but this is the very first time I'm going to see it in the flesh,

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and it is right in here.

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This is The Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Nicolaes Tulp,

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by Rembrandt.

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And it is so much bigger than I thought it was going to be!

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Good Lord, look at that.

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-It just glows.

-The amazing thing about Rembrandt is his light.

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But look how it is just...it's illuminated. Oh, wow!

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There is so much to say about this painting that it is

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almost difficult to know where to start.

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But one of the things that I think is really striking about it and one

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of the reasons I absolutely adore it

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is its composition is kind of unusual.

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It's not entirely clear what the focus is meant to be.

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All of the surgeons, members of the Surgeons' Guild,

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who are learning from the great master dissector.

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If you look at their eye lines, they're kind of...odd.

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None of them is looking at the body itself.

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You've got two in the middle who are overlooking

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the body at the book in the corner.

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Now, we think that book is De Fabrica, by Vesalius,

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the 16th century anatomist.

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At the back...

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..those two chaps are breaking the fourth wall,

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they're staring right at you.

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Group portraits like this were generally commissioned after

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the appointment of a new praelector to commemorate his tenure.

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And each of the surgeons would have paid for his place in the painting.

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Obviously, one of the main focuses of the painting is

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the man in the hat.

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That is Dr Nicolaes Tulp.

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And he, at the time, was the praelector of Amsterdam.

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This is 1632.

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He is the chief medical officer for the city.

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And it was he who commissioned the painting from Rembrandt.

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The hat is important because it indicates Tulp's seniority

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over everyone else in the portrait.

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And interestingly, Rembrandt initially painted

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the guy at the back, his name is Adriaan Slabberaan, with a hat.

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And you can just make out the shadow of it.

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It was painted out at Tulp's request in order to show

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that his status was higher than everyone else in the portrait.

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Tulp was a relatively young man at the time, 39, which is my age.

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But he would go on to make significant contributions to both

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medicine and science.

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He was the first person to suggest that smoking

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was related to lung disease.

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He was the first person to suggest that women with breast cancer

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should have the diseased tissue removed and drained, a mastectomy.

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But he also went on to have a really significant political career.

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In fact, he was mayor of Amsterdam four times.

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Although group portraits of surgeons had been commissions before,

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Rembrandt's was unusual in that it gave such prominence

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to an entire dead body.

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Nina Siegal is a writer in Amsterdam who recently published

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a novel based on this painting and the dead criminal,

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Adriaan Adriaanszoon, who is at its heart.

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One thing that really strikes me is that

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because of Rembrandt's ability to paint skin tones,

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Adriaanszoon is just there, he just glows above everyone else.

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I don't know whether that was deliberate that he should be

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the prominent figure, but that is what it looks like to me.

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Well, in my research, I actually found that this criminal was a thief.

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And everywhere that he went, he would be whipped or branded

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and his body would be scarred, basically, by his punishments.

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And yet Rembrandt seems to have chosen to clean up the body,

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to make the body very bright and very illuminated.

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When you look at the picture, you just can't help but

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your eye automatically goes to this dead man.

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Do you think that was Tulp's idea or was it Rembrandt's idea,

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-do we know?

-I believe that it was Rembrandt's idea,

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and it was a radical idea on his part.

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I think we have to think of this as Rembrandt's attempt at redemption.

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He has taken a common criminal,

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who would have been reviled in his own society,

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and turned him into a kind of saint or Christ-like figure,

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a Lazarus, somebody who is redeemed through science, essentially.

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Over the years, much has been made about how accurate it is.

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Where does this come from?

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Why is there such fascination with how accurate it is?

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You have to remember that this whole picture is a fiction.

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Doctors, of course, and medical people want to look at it

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as a document of the existing medical knowledge of that time,

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but what it really is is a construction

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of Rembrandt's imagination.

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If there was an anatomical lesson,

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they would not have started with the arm,

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they would've started with the torso and they would've cut out

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the belly first, cos those are the organs that decay fastest.

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So we would not have seen this picture at all.

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In fact, we would not have seen these men standing around in this

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way either.

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They would have been in a theatre that was in the round that

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was about 200 to 300 people.

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They would've all been standing over the railings and shouting

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and arguing.

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So, in fact, the whole picture is a work of fiction created by Rembrandt

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to create a kind of harmony and to tell a story that he wants to tell.

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For years, there have been debates about the anatomical

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accuracy of Adriaanszoon's arm.

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In my view, it looks absolutely fine.

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But the important point about choosing to focus on the arm

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is that Rembrandt and Tulp were making a statement.

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If I straighten the finger out here,

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you can see the muscle,

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the tendon of the muscle moving.

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So, if you can imagine if you have an inflammatory...

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The arm had been an object of fascination for both the

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ancient physician Galen and his 16th century successor, Vesalius.

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Well, the choice for the section of the forearm was clearly not

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Rembrandt's, it was most probably Tulp's because Tulp followed

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the example of the great physician

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of the 16th century - Andreas Vesalius.

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In his book, Vesalius had himself portrayed

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with a dissected forearm.

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And he named it the most important instrument for a doctor.

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So in adopting this iconography in The Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Tulp,

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Mr Tulp shows himself as the new or reborn as Vesalius, in a way.

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If we move slightly more distally, we come across this

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square-shaped structure here, where these tendons are popping out.

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The hand was the instrument of instruments.

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It was regarded as the most divine thing.

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And Galen said,

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"This is a wonderful piece of natural engineering."

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Choosing the hand has got all that riding on it.

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It relates to Galen,

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it relates to Vesalius

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and it relates to Tulp's own interest in what makes the human being divine.

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So, Rembrandt's an amazing artist.

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He is one of the people who can create these layers of meaning.

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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in Leiden in 1606.

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He came here, to Amsterdam,

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when he was in his early 20s and set up a studio.

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With 100,000 inhabitants, Amsterdam was the largest

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city in the Dutch Republic, and it was the richest.

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There was money here, money to invest in universities

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and medicine and money to commission up-and-coming artists,

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like Rembrandt himself.

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The Dutch Republic was really the centre of the world.

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It was the most radical, the most dynamic economic

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and political structure that the world had ever seen,

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and that had consequences both for art and for science.

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The new rich traders

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and merchants wanted art that would reflect their view of the world,

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and that's why you get these fantastic paintings of very ordinary

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people, of wealthy people but not of rich people, not of aristocrats.

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So, in a sense, Rembrandt is actually reflecting the fashion,

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the zeitgeist of what is going on in Amsterdam at this time.

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Very much so.

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He is both representing the economic and social power that exists

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and also describing this beginning of this wave of discovery,

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of scientific discovery, that was going to take place throughout

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the Dutch Republic through the 17th century.

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This wave of discovery saw people striving after new knowledge

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instead of relying on the wisdom of the ancients.

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And Rembrandt himself was no different, particularly

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when it came to understanding anatomy.

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Rembrandt lived and worked right there for 20 years

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He moved in just after he finished painting the Tulp Anatomy Lesson.

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Now unfortunately, he wasn't very good with money,

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and he frittered away his cash. He went bankrupt in 1656.

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He had to sell this place to repay all of his debts.

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Now as part of that process,

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an inventory was drawn up of all of his possessions.

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And amongst the bric-a-brac of a painter's life,

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there were body parts - four flayed arms and legs.

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Everything that you can see here is reconstructed from that inventory.

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Rembrandt owned a range of curiosities,

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including exotic weapons and lion skins.

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And he collected paintings, drawings, prints and casts.

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The inventory is proof of Rembrandt's curiosity

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about anatomy and death, but it is not the only evidence that we have.

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We also know that he visited local butcher shops

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and picked up animal parts, joints that he could study and sketch.

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In 1656, the year of his bankruptcy,

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Rembrandt was commissioned to paint a second anatomy lesson,

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this time conducted by a Doctor Deijman, who had succeeded

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Nicolaes Tulp as praelector of the Surgeons' Guild three years earlier.

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Although Tulp was a skilled and modern anatomist,

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as a doctor, he remained loyal to classical medicine,

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whereas Rembrandt's portrayal of Dr Deijman seems to reflect

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a growing interest in new ideas.

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Well, that is very different, isn't it?

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It is much darker, almost sinister.

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And it certainly gives the impression of being

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a lot less staged.

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Once again, the body being sliced up is that of a criminal.

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This chap was called Joris Fonteijn, also known as Black John.

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He was executed on the 27th of January, 1656,

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for multiple counts of burglary.

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This painting has been hugely overshadowed by the Tulp Anatomy

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Lesson, and that is mostly because this is less than

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a sixth the original.

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In 1723, almost the whole thing was destroyed in a fire.

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This fragment is all that remains.

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Fortunately, a preliminary drawing by Rembrandt does survive,

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showing that the corpse would have been surrounded by surgeons.

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Based on this and by borrowing from other Rembrandt paintings

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for the missing head shots,

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experts at the Amsterdam Museum have created a digital reconstruction

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to show what the original painting might have looked like.

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Ironically,

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the corpse on the table survived the fire more or less intact.

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And that is because it contains much lead white,

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the element with which the white paint is made.

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And the white of lead white is less sensitive to fire.

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What is interesting about The Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Deijman

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is the element of time that Rembrandt incorporated here.

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He gives us the impression as if we are at the second

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day of the anatomy lesson, because the thorax has been emptied,

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the perishable organs have gone

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and we're looking up to the head,

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with Dr Deijman performing the brain dissection,

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which is a great moment and a moment supreme

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of any anatomy lesson.

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So, Deijman had to surpass his predecessor,

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Tulp, in choosing the right dissection.

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And Rembrandt had to surpass his own anatomy lesson of 24 years earlier.

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Now, this is very different from the Tulp Anatomy Lesson,

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and I think it is fair to say not quite of the same calibre.

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But there are lots of very interesting things about it.

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And the first is the position of the body.

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Most anatomy lesson paintings have the body lying long ways,

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whereas Joris here is coming out of the picture.

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This forced shortening of his limbs to give very large feet

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and perspective, almost like the cover of a comic book.

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And the second is the position of his head.

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You can't really get your head into that position

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unless you've been hanged.

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It is as if Rembrandt has chosen this precise moment to

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capture a freeze frame of the anatomy lesson in action.

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Deijman's hands are poised for the next step,

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which would have been to separate the two hemispheres in order

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to reach down into the core of the brain.

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Once again, this harks back to the 16th century and Vesalius,

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whose instructions Deijman could well have been following

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and whose illustrations would have shown him what to expect next.

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But Deijman may have been looking for something more.

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One interpretation is that he was searching for Fonteijn's soul.

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At this point in history,

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people had started to realise that the brain was an extremely

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important organ, and probably the centre of consciousness.

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So the ideas about the soul

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and consciousness have moved from the heart into the brain.

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And there were various models for how this might work.

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And one of the most important have been written by Descartes,

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who was a French philosopher who'd isolated

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the site of the human soul in the pineal gland, which is

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situated just beneath the structures we can see in the Deijman dissection.

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And it could be argued that this painting actually represents

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a fusion of the scientific and religious interests of the age.

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Descartes' book containing this theory, Les Passions De L'ame,

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or The Passions Of The Soul, had been published in Amsterdam

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shortly before this painting was made.

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It was the talk of the town.

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This may explain the enormous popularity of the anatomy

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lectures given by Jan Deijman.

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Records indicate that the dissection attracted several hundred

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spectators each day.

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Rembrandt clearly excelled in this genre.

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But he was not the only Dutch painter to tackle anatomical

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portraits.

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Two of his contemporaries painted portraits of Dr Deijman's

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successor, a man who became praelector in 1666.

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What is fascinating about these paintings is not

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so much the artistry itself, but the anatomists portrayed within them.

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This guy was a character. He was larger-than-life.

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I have to admit, I'm a bit of a fan. His name was Frederik Ruysch.

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Now, throughout history, anatomy had been studied

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largely for intellectual reasons - knowledge for its own sake.

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And it appears that Ruysch's motivation was slightly different.

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He was primarily interested in studying anatomy in order to

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help treat patients.

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This very practical use of anatomy is what shines

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through in the paintings

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made of Ruysch by the artist Adrian Backer and Jan van Neck,

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which are temporarily in storage at the Amsterdam Museum.

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This is The Anatomy Lesson Of Frederik Ruysch.

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He is standing there.

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It was painted in 1670.

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It is a painting that belongs

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to the famous series of paintings from the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons.

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And so this is Ruysch here.

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The only one wearing a hat, of course.

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In all of the paintings, the same.

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-And at this point in his career, how old is he?

-He is 32 years old.

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But he had a really long career, didn't he?

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Yeah, he had a second painting done in 1683.

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It was painted by Jan van Neck,

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and he is dissecting the corpse of a newborn.

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Quite a disturbing image, this, at least for 20th-century eyes.

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Why did he choose a newborn baby to take apart?

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It was very unusual to show a newborn

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instead of an executed criminal.

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I think he chose to be depicted with a newborn

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because he was also the chief obstetrician of Amsterdam.

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And in terms of what we can see in the picture, there is the baby,

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but then there is very significantly the placenta next to him.

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And one of the surgeons is pointing to it.

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What is the significance of the placenta in this picture?

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Ruysch carefully examined the placenta

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and he believed it was a special muscle in the wall of the uterus.

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And he thought that this muscle was responsible for expelling

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the placenta after delivery.

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That muscle doesn't exist, the womb does that naturally,

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the uterus does expel the placenta as part of birth.

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Is that not what they were doing before this?

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No, sometimes midwives tried to pull out the placenta with a little

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bit of force, and this can cause severe haemorrhages.

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And Ruysch taught them that you could patiently wait for the placenta

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to be delivered, and don't take the risk of those severe bleedings.

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And did he have a positive affect on childbirth, on pregnancy

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-and obstetrics in and around Amsterdam?

-I think so,

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because he was concerned with the education of the midwives

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and he got permission from the City Council to teach midwives

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and to perform exams for the midwives.

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So he really transformed the level of obstetrical care in Amsterdam.

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But as well as celebrating Ruysch's medical improvements,

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these paintings testify to his other great skill -

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his groundbreaking preservation techniques, which allowed him

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to conduct dissections beyond the traditional winter season

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and into the early spring.

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When we look at the first Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Ruysch, what is more

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striking is that we are looking at an intact body, almost intact body.

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Because he had a reputation as a wonderful preparer of dead bodies.

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Ruysch wanted to have these bodies painted as intact as possible.

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He used rapidly setting liquids

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with added pigments to create

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the effect as if they were not dead, but just asleep.

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And again, this newborn baby is depicted as if it were asleep,

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with his little hand clutched around the umbilical cord.

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Which is strange, of course, but wonderful, and moving even.

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Ruysch wants to stress his reputation as an excellent preparer of bodies.

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His reputation internationally was that he could raise the dead

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to life again.

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I think the most important legacy left by Ruysch was he was able

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to both pickle various body parts

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and leave them in a state where they can still be studied today.

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It is quite astonishing that nearly 350 years later, you can

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still look at samples which he created.

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This is extremely important because in making these new discoveries

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about anatomy, people needed to be able to show what they had found.

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And this is still used today, the same approach is still used

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today in teaching medical students human anatomy.

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But there is another fascinating aspect to Ruysch's work,

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which I am returning to England to investigate.

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It turns out that as well as being the subject of great art,

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Ruysch was himself an incredibly gifted artist.

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If a little bonkers.

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The Wellcome Library has a beautiful edition of engravings made from

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Ruysch's drawings of the anatomical specimens in his collection.

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And this is it -

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The First Anatomical Thesaurus Of Frederik Ruysch, published

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in 1739, eight years after he had died, at the ripe old age of 92.

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I'm just going to have a look at this fold-out illustration.

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Wow, this is the most extraordinary, bizarre image.

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I almost don't know what to make of it.

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It has five skeletons of babies,

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which reflects Ruysch's interest in obstetrics.

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And they're all doing different things.

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The one at the top is actually playing a sort of violin

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made of, well, these branching structures.

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He has got a friend down here who is playing some sort of

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wind instrument. And you can tell they're babies because this one,

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you can see the fontanel, which is the gap in the skull before

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the skull has closed in newborns.

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And they're all standing on this giant pile of what

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looks like rocks or eggs. In fact, they are gallbladder stones.

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All surrounded by these branching trees that look like foliage, but in

0:26:490:26:53

fact, I guess, are representations of nerves and arteries.

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It is almost like a Salvador Dali - totally surreal.

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Or maybe a prog rock album cover from the 1970s.

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But whatever, it is totally bonkers and absolutely wonderful.

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Ruysch created dozens of these drawings featuring foetal

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skeletons and body parts.

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But while they may seem bizarre, they do carry a solemn message.

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The key message here is actually about trying to show not

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only his art, but also,

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these were kind of moral messages for the people of the time.

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They were showing how short people's lives were

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and indicating that death could come at any moment.

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And we can see at the bottom of this particular illustration that

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one of the skeletons is holding a mayfly, the symbol of a brief

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and ephemeral life.

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Frederik Ruysch was a radical pioneer of anatomy.

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And like his predecessors, Nicolaes Tulp and Jan Deijman,

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he challenged the medical status quo.

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In Amsterdam, as the debate raged between ancient wisdom

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and modern medicine, anatomy emerged as the leading medical science.

0:28:080:28:12

During this Dutch Golden Age, our knowledge and understanding of

0:28:120:28:16

childbirth, of cancers, of a whole host of diseases just leapt forward.

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And because the people involved were so celebrated, they were painted.

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Thanks to their research, their science,

0:28:250:28:28

we have some of the finest works of art of all time.

0:28:280:28:31

And at the very top of the pile is Rembrandt.

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