- [Voiceover] We're in the Mauritshuis Museum

in the Hague, and we're looking at one

of Rembrandt's most famous paintings.

This is the Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp.

- [Voiceover] This is a typical group portrait,

an important type of painting

in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century.

This happens to be the Guild of Surgeons,

and regularly they would commission

a group portrait to hang in the public space

where their guild would meet.

- [Voiceover] Once a year, there would be

a public dissection where some element

of the body would be explicated,

and that's what we're seeing here.

Now this is not true to life.

In reality, this would have been

a much more public event.

It's very likely that the chief surgeon,

in this case Dr. Tulp, would not have been

performing the actual dissection,

but would have had an assistant do this.

But what's so remarkable here is that Rembrandt

is reinventing the group portrait.

Now it's important to remember that Holland,

in the 17th century, was largely a Protestant nation.

The church was no longer a major patron.

So artists looked to the professional

and middle classes for patronage,

and that's what we have here.

- [Voiceover] And the professional

and middle classes and merchant classes

looked to artists to create a new kind

of art that would meet their needs,

and in this case, the need to show

off the profession of these men,

and specifically in this case,

the brilliance of Dr. Tulp.

- [Voiceover] I think it's hard to imagine

that for so much of history prior to this painting,

that as a culture we had so little understanding

of the human body.

We begin to reinvestigate it during

the Renaissance, and then here in the Baroque era,

we begin to impose a scientific investigation

on the human body and understand it again.

- [Voiceover] Leonardo and Michelangelo

dissected bodies pretty much in secret

so they could understand how the body worked

and represent it in their paintings,

but up in the north, in the Dutch Republic,

doctors and artists were able

to do this more openly.

That book at the feet of the cadaver

is a reminder of this renewed interest

in human anatomy.

They're dissecting a man who had just been hanged.

He's a criminal.

- [Voiceover] Look at the way that Rembrandt

has taken what was a genre of painting

where men's faces were often simply aligned,

very much like a contemporary class portrait,

which was meant to be a documentation,

and he's created out of that,

not only a sense of individuality,

but a sense of a shared moment.

- [Voiceover] A narrative story that unfolds,

each of these figures doing something

slightly different, paying attention

to slightly different things.

Then you have this wonderful varied light

with the most light falling on the cadaver

and on Dr. Tulp.

- [Voiceover] He's lifting up the tendons

and exposing, not only the forearm,

but the hand as well.

It's a remarkable thing because you have,

not only the exposed mechanics of the human hand,

but the intact hand of the doctor

manipulating that exposed hand,

and although we don't see it directly,

the hand of the artist who's able to produce

this painting with his own hand,

which is here visible through his brush work.

- [Voiceover] Through the paint.

I've always understood what Tulp

was doing with his left hand as showing

how those tendons would move the arm.

- [Voiceover] Rembrandt has placed these figures

in a pyramid, that is, they're almost stacked

on top of each other so the no face

is hidden in part and each figure is given

a kind of prominence.

- [Voiceover] But that pyramid is off to the left,

and so there's a real asymmetry,

and Tulp stands alone on the right.

That foreshortened cadaver coming into our space,

it's a horrifying painting for us to look at.

Although these may have been

public events in the 17th century,

these aren't things that we're used to seeing.

- [Voiceover] I'm interested in the fact

that when we see dead bodies painted

in the history of western art,

it is generally a representation of Christ.

There are even examples where Christ

is represented in this kind of foreshortened pose.

You might think, for instance,

of Dead Christ by Mantegna.

But here, science has replaced the spiritual,

and it is really a reminder

that the 17th century is a point

where science really does come to the fore

and begins to lay the foundation

for the modern world.

- [Voiceover] We see Rembrandt bringing drama,

and bringing narrative, and bringing storytelling

to the group portrait.

We saw this, for example, in The Night Watch,

this amazing kind of animation

and naturalism removing the stiffness

and uniformity of light that had been there

in earlier group portraits.

- [Voiceover] And like the later Night Watch,

Rembrandt focuses our attention

in very specific places.

Look, for example, at the way which

the entire lower left corner is virtually invisible.

We can just make out the elbows,

the drapes of the figures.

We can just make out the chair,

but we're not meant to focus there.

Our eye is not meant to rest there,

but our eye is drawn to the center.

Of course, the most attention is given

to the faces and then the attributes

of the success of these figures,

and that comes across very clearly

in the starched white collars,

which are painted with such meticulous skill

and were a signal of the wealth of the sitters.

Think about the effort that went into keeping

those snow-white, and then ironing them

and starching them so that they were just perfect.

It's so clearly a Baroque painting.

Look at the proximity of that body,

the way in which we are part of the circle

surrounding this body.

There's an intimacy and directness

that you'd never see in the Renaissance.

- [Voiceover] And that reality of that dead body too.

We don't have that tendency to idealize

that we see in Renaissance painting,

but that interest in reality

and the mundane, in day to day life

that's part of, especially, Dutch Baroque paintings.

Now Rembrandt is 25 when he paints this,

which is just astounding.

At an age when most people would still be students,

Rembrandt appears to be an accomplished artist.

He had just recently moved to Amsterdam,

and this painting launches his career

as the most sought after portrait painter

in Amsterdam for a couple of decades to come.

(piano music)