The mystery of the tattered glove and the dissected knee in the anatomy lesson of Professor Roell

In the eighteenth century a new climate brought about and reflected some of the major changes in the tradition of group portraiture of surgeons. Cornelis Troost, the most important Dutch painter of the 18th century, was commissioned an Anatomy Lesson of Dr Roell (1728). This painting marks the conclusion of a period, it signals what appears to be a different relationship between the viewer, the sitter, and the subject matter, and a new individual and more humane message, no longer with a philosophical function rather a demonstration of clinical anatomy, “Know Thy Knee” instead of the more portentous “Know Thyself”.

Marina Wallace also contributed a foreward and a co-authored introduction to this volume.

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