The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp

Rembrandt was only 26 when he captured this scene, and it launched his reputation in Amsterdam practically overnight. The painting records a real public anatomy lesson led by Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, the official anatomist of the city's surgeons' guild. Back in the 1600s, these dissections drew crowds and were treated as genuine events, complete with paying spectators. The body stretched out on the table belonged to a criminal named Aris Kindt, who had been executed. Wearing the only hat in the group, Dr. Tulp lifts the muscles of the arm with a pair of forceps and explains their workings to the surgeons gathered around him. Each of those men paid to have his portrait included, which explains why they crowd in so eagerly.

The play of light and dark, so typical of the Dutch Golden Age, is what gives the picture its punch. Kindt's pale body glows against the deep brown gloom, drawing your attention right to the exposed arm. The onlookers do not all fix on the corpse either. A few peer at the open anatomy book at the bottom edge, while others turn their gaze outward toward us, lending the whole thing a stagey, almost dramatic energy.

One odd detail keeps experts talking. The muscles in the dissected arm seem to be connected in the wrong spot. Some think Rembrandt copied them from a medical textbook instead of the actual body, others suspect a simple slip of the brush. Nobody has settled the question, and the little error remains part of the painting's charm.