Resurrecting death: anatomical art in the cabinet of Dr. Frederik Ruysch

The theatrical display of novel science and empirical investigation as "strange and miraculous" was characteristic of early recent European scientific discourse.(1) In professional forums ranging from public demonstrations of anatomy to the dissected curiosities displayed in the Wunderkammern, staged medical performances were designed to attract viewers' attention and to assert professional legitimacy.(9) This essay will examine sum of two units monumental paintings of anatomy exercise s by Adrian Backer and Jan van Neck within the adjoining matter of the anatomical cabinet in late seventeenth-century Holland [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1 2 OMITTED]. These paintings, part of a series of portraits commissioned by the agency of the Amsterdam Chirurgijnsgilde, or Guild of Surgeon between 1603 and 1758 valorize the skill and lifework of Dr Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731)

A prominent surgeon obstetrician, and anatomist from 1666 to 1731 Ruysch was the chief anatomist of the Amsterdam surgeons' guild for almost sixty years.(3) During this time, he was responsible for creating a novel aesthetic of anatomical demonstration in Amsterdam. through means of his innovations in embalming and preservation techniques, Ruysch contributed greatly to the application of mind of the anatomized body. His influence upon the artistic development of the anatomy exercise genre as represented in these sum of two units paintings will be the primary focus of this paper.

The paintings were hung with five others, including Rembrandt's famous Anatomy exercise of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp, 1632 and Anatomy exercise of Dr. Joan Deyman, 1656 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 3 4 OMITTED], in the formal meeting sweeps of the surgeons' guild headquarters. They commemorated the public anatomical demonstrations usually held in the city during the winter month and they serv as constant reminders to their audience of the prestige accorded to the guild.(4) This audience included guild members, magistrates, and city governors. In addition, public discourses and examinations for the certification of junior barber-surgeons and midwives were held in these same chambers.

The sum of two units Ruysch portraits have previously been discussed solitary within the tradition of general medical imagery in Holland, or in boundarys of their debt to Rembrandt's stylistic innovations.(5) My argument will impel beyond these investigations of iconography and phraseology to explore the social reality that constituted the pictorial way and ideological content of the anatomical-lesson genre

Anatomical application of mind of human cadavers was not legalized in the Netherlands until 1555 when dissection was allowed alone of male bodies.(6) The public dissection of female bodies did not become commonplace in Holland until late in the seventeenth century(7) The Dutch municipal regulation acted on its belief that anatomy tasks should not be placed solely in the hands of the surgeons' guilds. Instead, they appointed individual doctor to the post of Praelector Chirurgiae et Anatomie, or city anatomist. This man had the legal right to dissect a certain number of corpses through year. At least one of these dissections was required to be lay open to the public.

In viewing the opening up of a corpse, the witness must suppres certain natural reactions to the willful mutilation of a human material substance as well as the physical manifestations of decaying muscle and fat In seventeenth-century Holland, a cultural paradigm was erected whereby the narrative of the anatomy exercise was fictionalized and aestheticized. Representations of anatomical practice adopted the prevailing themes of emblematic morality, and were many times presented in the guise of fresh science. However, this apparent realism move swiftlys counter to the high stage of artifice also found in the paintings. Examples discussed below include outright anatomical inaccuracies, the alteration of stages in the usual order of dissection, and changing the age of a make subordinate Both the ritual of the annual public dissections and the paintings commissioned to document them were theatrically cloaked in the pictorial guise typically used to depict large-scale historical circumstances This resulted in an elevation of status the pair for the practice of anatomy and for the guild representing its practitioners. In this way, the act of dissecting the human material part and its representation in art were made presentable as a noble enterprise for public consumption.

Adriaen Backer's Anatomy exercise of Dr. Frederik Ruysch of 1670 depicts a youthful Ruysch demonstrating the inguinal canal upon the delicately flayed left thigh of a cadaver [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED].(8) The picture is plant in the surgeons' guild theater, then located in the former St Margaret's Chapel upon the Nes.(9) Ruysch is encircleed by six surgeons, each of whom paid for the privilege of being included in the portrait: three of their names can still be read as inscriptions upon the right pilaster.(10) The statues in the background have been identified as Apollo and Asclepius, the ancient the supreme beings of medicine.(11) These classical figures create a striking visual contrast with their seventeenth-century counterparts, who appear as novel medical practitioners acknowledging their humanist legacy.