Nicolaes Tulp depicted in the painting can be dated to 16 January 1632; the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, of which Tulp was official City Anatomist, permitted only one public dissection a year and the body would have to be that of an executed criminal. The criminal is identified as the robber Aris Kindt. Rembrandt would later make a painting of Tulp's successor in 1656 "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Jan Deijman". Since the painting of Tulp's predecessor in 1619, "The Osteology Lesson of Dr Sebastiaen Egbertsz" was a group portrait around a skeleton, it is clear that the subject of a dead
Isabella Henriette van Eeghen to follow in the footsteps of her grandfather, also called Christiaan Pieter van Eeghen, who in his free time set up the Vondelpark and was responsible for various improvements to the Van der Hoop museum in 1854, the forerunner of the Rijksmuseum. It was the elder Van Eeghen who paid to have the paintings in the Amsterdam surgeons' guild restored in 1865, among them of course the "Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp". Isa attended the local girls' school MMS and then continued at the Gymnasium, eventually earning her degree in history from the University of Amsterdam. She earned her