A surgeon removing a plaster from a man's back, with five people looking on. Oil painting attributed to Adriaen Rombouts, 16--.

Rombouts, Adriaen, active approximately 1640-after 1667.

Date:: [1647?/1667]

Reference:: 500931i

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Credit

A surgeon removing a plaster from a man's back, with five people looking on. Oil painting attributed to Adriaen Rombouts, 16--. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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About this work

Description

Above the door on the left, a red-chalk drawing of Fortuna (Fortune) on her wheel is pinned to the wall, perhaps to declare the uncertainty of human life, the unpredictability of health, and the "fleeting opportunity" of the healer which is mentioned in the first Hippocratic aphorism. Next to it is a wreath of osiers (used for tying together bunches of herbs?). On the back wall to the left of the shelves are two stills or alembics for chemical distillation. Objects strung together along a cord decorate the fronts of the shelves: they may be extracted bladder-stones (calculi)

Publication/Creation

[Brussels?], [1647?/1667]

Physical description

1 painting : oil on canvas ; canvas 48.3 x 64.8 cm

Contributors

Notes

In early modern Europe, affluent men and women received treatment at home, while hospitals and offices of barber surgeons were reserved for less wealthy patients. Alluence came with the privilege of concealing one's illness and suffering, which explains why images of upper-class patients are rare. Paintings such as this one portray a group of curious onlookers, their relationship to the patient is unknown and their presence transforms treatment into performance. Because of the focus on the lower classes and exaggeration of their facial expressions, such imagery has often been associated with social satire, akin to depictions of unscrupulous quacks tricking naive persons into suspicious treatments. Rombout's painting appears to focus on the visual representation of pain in a secular context. (Source: Barbara Kaminska and Jess Bailey, Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference workshop, 2024)

References note

Phillips, London, Old Master paintings, 6 July 1999, lot 132, p. 124 (reproduced)

Reference

Wellcome Collection 500931i

Creator/production credits

An alternative attribution has been put forward to the Monogrammatist H.C.: monogrammed paintings by him include one offered for sale at Sotheby's Amsterdam on 18 February 2003 ("HC IN") and another at Bonhams, London, 9 July 2008, lot 83 (reported as signed "HG IN") -- website of RKD Images, 2012