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
Nicolaes Tulp Surgeons. His wife died in the same year, leaving him with five young children. In 1630 he married his second wife, the daughter of the mayor of Outshoorn and she bore him three children. It was Dr Tulp who examined and signed the fitness reports for the first Dutch settlers on the island of Manhattan, and his signature was found on these in the long-lost archives of the Dutch settlement uncovered in the 1980s in the basement of the New York public library. In his job, Tulp was responsible for inspections of apothecary shops. Chemists in Amsterdam had access to