The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp scene. The face of the corpse is partially shaded, a suggestion of "umbra mortis" (shadow of death), a technique that Rembrandt was to use frequently. The French art historian Jean-Marie Clarke points out that the navel of the corpse has the shape of a capital R and connects this observation to the fact that Rembrandt worked intensively on his signatures in 1632, using three types consecutively before settling on the final, first name form in 1633. Kindt was discussed in the 1999 novel "The Rings of Saturn" by W. G. Sebald, and plays a significant role in Laird Hunt's 2006
Nicolaes Tulp but also because of the fantastic stories that he relates. An example; Jan de Doot, a blacksmith in Amsterdam, was in such pain from a bladder stone, that he sharpened a knife and removed it himself, because he refused to be the victim of the 'stone cutters'. These were the barber-surgeons who performed such procedures but had a high death rate. To everyone's surprise, Jan de Doot survived this operation which was said to produce a stone the size of an egg. A painting illustrating this story is in the collection of the Anatomy Museum of Leiden. Tulp minutely described