An operation for stone in the head. Oil painting by a follower of Jan Sanders van Hemessen.

The woman on the right appears in a painting by Jan Sanders van Hemessen in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut (no. 1941.233), which is signed and dated 1543. The man in the upper left corner appears in paintings attributed to J. Sanders van Hemessen of the summoning of Saint Matthew, e.g. Lempertz auction, Cologne, 17 November 2001, lot no. 1064, in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, no. GG 961, and and in a Bucharest museum (https://rkd.nl/explore/images/107230 )

Pictures of a surgeon making an incision in a patient's head in order to extract a stone were first collected by Henry Meige, who called the subject "pierre de tête". The pictures do not record an actual operation, but are allegorical scenes referring to the subduction of 'folly' (madness) from the body as if it were something that could be cured by surgery. See W. Schupbach, loc. cit.

1 painting : oil on wood ; wood 70 x 96.3 cm

W. Schupbach, 'A new look at the cure of folly', Medical history, 1978, 22: 267-281

Wellcome Collection 44860i