Reconstructing Rembrandt

Although most historical research takes the form of investigation of old documents, other techniques can also be a potential source of illumination. The Wellcome Trust trains aspiring historians in oral history, and is keen to bring the professional experience of clinicians into the sphere of historical research. The knack is to apply current knowledge to historical questions without falling into anachronism. One area in which today’s experience can be useful is in questions about the history of anatomy, for although ideas about the body are in continual flux, the anatomy of the human body itself is assumed not to have changed at all in the historical period.

One such question is: what is going on in Rembrandt’s painting ‘The Anatomy of Dr Johan Deijman’? The painting, commissioned in 1656, shows a dissected cadaver, with a man holding the top of the skull and the hands and trunk of the anatomist, Johan Deijman: the rest of the painting, showing Dr Deijman’s head and about seven other spectators, was destroyed by fire in 1723. What is actually being dissected in the painting, and why, out of the thousands of dissections that could have been selected, was that one alone chosen? To help answer the first question, a reconstruction of the dissection was arranged, using facilities kindly provided by Laurence Garey, Professor of Anatomy in the Division of Neuroscience at Imperial College, and Mei Guan, the Prosector in the same Division. Their skilful reconstruction revealed many points which have not hitherto been recognised.

The reconstruction showed that the structure being held by Dr Deijman is the falx, the crescent-shaped structure that lines the gap between the two cerebral hemispheres. The dissection also showed what liberties the anatomist and the painter have taken. Dr Deijman has already cut the falx out of the fissure in which it sits, has turned it around 180 degrees to show its crescent shaped side to the viewer of the painting, and (a nice touch) is holding it with his forceps to give the impression that he is just lifting it out of the brain. Rembrandt’s painterly licence has been even more unscrupulous: the soles of the cadaver’s feet are shown, implying a low viewpoint, but the brain is depicted from a much higher position, and from much closer. In order to foreshorten the cadaver, Rembrandt has quietly eliminated at least a cubic metre of Amsterdam airspace.

Why choose a dissection of the falx, an organ not considered very important, for such an important commission? A reason emerges when we consider the painting in historical context and perspective. The painting is one in a series, including Rembrandt’s earlier ‘Anatomy of Dr Tulp’, which aimed to communicate a suitable public image for the commissioning body, the Amsterdam Corporation of Surgeons. The surgeons presented themselves as the craftsmen whose working material was the living human body.

One of the lessons that they taught was the fragility of human life: by what a slender thread we live or die. All Rembrandt’s distortions have the effect of emphasising the difference between life and death. And the falx? ‘Falx’ is Latin for scythe or sickle, and the scythe is the instrument with which Death, the grim reaper, harvests his crop of human beings. Rembrandt himself, in one of his etchings, had shown Death armed with a sickle, so he would certainly have appreciated Dr Deijman’s little pun.

The painting is coming to London from Amsterdam for the exhibition ‘Spectacular Bodies’ at the Hayward Gallery (19 October 2000 – 14 January 2001), so anatomists will be able to judge for themselves the evidence for this new interpretation.

See also

• Iconographic Collections: Artwork details

External links

• Rembrandt artworks: Online gallery
• Rembrandt: Biographical information