Rembrandt's Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp: An Iconological Study

Excerpt from Rembrandt's Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp: An Iconological StudyIn the first and last chapters I have tried to isolate and interpret social and cultural trends that prevailed in the city of Amsterdam in the early 16 5o's, to illuminate the time and the place that had witnessed the birth of Rembrandt's first great painting. The rest of my book is devoted to an attempt to place Rembrandt's work in the stream of an artistic and scientific tradition that extends from about 1480 to about 1780.My study was undertaken in the belief that every great work of art, apart from its forever changing aesthetic appeal to posterity, is an unchanging mirror of its cultural ambient. This is the reason why I have done my best to interpret Rembrandt's painting in terms used by the cultured people in his Amsterdam environment who talked art while he realized it. The motto that I have used for this Introduction represents the Latin, Dutch.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.