The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp central figures (in this case, Dr. Tulp) probably paid more, even twice as much. Rembrandt's anatomical portrait radically altered the conventions of the genre, by including a full length corpse in the center of the image (using Christ-like iconography) and creating not just a portrait but a dramatic Mise-en-scène. Rembrandt's image is a fiction; in a typical anatomy lesson, the surgeon would begin by opening the chest cavity and thorax because the internal organs there decay most rapidly. One person is missing: the Preparator, whose task was to prepare the body for the lesson. In the 17th century an important
The Anatomy Lesson (Morley novel) dead-on portrait of inept parents and aimless youth,” concluded Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist. “Blackly funny,” wrote Alex Clark in "The Observer", “but breathtakingly bleak.” “John David Morley is known to European and American literary connoisseurs as a writer who merits serious attention”, Bettina Drew wrote in "The Washington Post", before hailing the author's latest work as “a serious meditation on despair and loss and our inability to really know the people we love.” After "Pictures from the Water Trade" in 1985 and "The Feast of Fools" in 1994, "The Anatomy Lesson" became the third of Morley's novels to be designated