Dutch Golden Age painting Drapers' Guild" is a subtle treatment of a group round a table. Scientists often posed with instruments and objects of their study around them. Physicians sometimes posed together around a cadaver, a so-called 'Anatomical Lesson', the most famous one being Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" (1632, Mauritshuis, The Hague). Boards of trustees in their "regentenstuk" portraits preferred an image of austerity and humility, posing in dark clothing (which by its refinement testified to their prominent standing in society), often seated around a table, with solemn expressions on their faces. Most militia group portraits were commissioned in Haarlem and
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