An old man consulting a book and holding a flask in a room with many pharmacy jars. Oil painting in the style of Egbert van Heemskerck.

An elderly man with a white beard and a fur-trimmed robe is seated, centre, directed towards a table, left, reading a large book. On the table are a globe (apparently a celestial globe) and some drug jars. In his left hand he holds a urine flask. A woman on the far side of the table talks to him, presumably seeking a diagnosis from the urine. The suggestion is that he is a savant or would-be savant with an interest in medicine and astral sciences, and is being consulted on a medical question. In the backgrounds are a man and a woman. On the table on the left and elsewhere are over thirty drug jars, medicine bottles etc. of different types and sizes

The drug jars are similar to those in a painting sold as by Heemskerck at Sotheby's London (Olympia) on 6 July 2004, lot 483, signed EHK

1 painting : oil on canvas ; canvas 36 x 48.7 cm

Christopher Wright et al., British and Irish paintings in public collections, New Haven and London: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2006, p. 408

Wellcome Collection 44603i