The anatomist Felix Platter, seated at a table covered with surgical instruments in a room with two other men, below which are the figures of Hippocrates and Galen. Engraving, 1656.

Felix Platter is shown seated, with two companions, at a table covered with surgical instruments, books, fruit and a bird which he touches while holding a scalpel in his other hand. Below this room are the figures of Hippocrates and Galen, set before niches, on either side of a flayed human skin. (For a similar arrangement, see this catalogue 24939.) On the right base, below Galen is the image of a swan around whose neck is entwined a snake and a crown. On the left base, below Hippocrates, is the image of a crane holding a stone in the claw of its raised leg, an allegory of Vigilance. After studying in Montpellier, Felix Platter returned to Basel to lecture on medicine at the University and be appointed the principal physician of the city. During his student years, he kept a journal that described his experiences and medical education, as well as capturing daily sixteenth-century student-life. In addition to being an anatomist and physician, he was also a collector