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In 1635 van den Heuvel presented a painting of 'a doctor visited by all kinds of sick people' to the hospital of St Job, Utrecht. The following year he died of the plague at Utrecht and was interred on 28 August 1636. The figure-types, very similar to those of Pieter Quast, are combined in a lively composition. The surgeon wears the flamboyant costume of the itinerant operators who worked out of doors, but is here shown working in the borrowed surgery of a surgeon-apothecary. On the banner on the right are depicted calculi, stones extracted from the body. They are bladder stones, but perhaps the implication is that the operator can extract 'pierres de tête' from the head: these proverbial stones were a symptom of folly in popular parlance.
Title
An Operator Making an Incision behind the Ear of a Seated Patient
Date
1630s (?)
Medium
oil on wood
Measurements
H 41.5 x W 56 cm
Accession number
46023i
Acquisition method
purchased by Henry S. Wellcome, c.1900–1936
Work type
Painting
Wellcome Collection
183 Euston Road, London, Greater London NW1 2BE England
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