The Young Bull when he completed it; he died in 1654, before he reached 30. The painting was highly admired in the 18th and 19th centuries; in the 1870s the French artist and critic Eugène Fromentin asserted confidently that it, Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" and his "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" (also in the Mauritshuis) were the three most famous paintings in the Netherlands. The painting was enlarged by Potter, who added extra strips of canvas on both sides and at the top to his original composition, which just included the bull itself. The village in the background is Rijswijk, between
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp copy of "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp" by an unknown artist hangs in Edinburgh as part of The University of Edinburgh Fine Art Collection. "The Gross Clinic" of 1875 and "The Agnew Clinic" of 1889 are paintings by the American artist Thomas Eakins which treat a similar subject, operations on live patients in the presence of medical students. In 2010, Yiull Damaso created a parody of the painting depicting prominent South Africans. Nelson Mandela was the cadaver, Nkosi Johnson was the instructor, and the students were Desmond Tutu, F. W. de Klerk, Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma, Cyril Ramaphosa,