The Anatomy Lesson (6 page)

The painting was lined three times from 1785 to 1877, and then wax lined in 1877 and 1908. The varnish was regenerated five times and there is a record of ten cleanings, the last four in 1877, 1908, 1946, and 1951. The last time we took it off the wall was in 1996, so while we are cleaning it and removing some of the darkening varnish, this is an opportunity to examine the work and possibly to make a number of new observations.

We have secured funding for the current restoration and examination based on new evidence that leads us to believe we can make certain new discoveries about the painting. Recently, researchers in Amsterdam discovered in a 1632
justitieboek
that
details the entire criminal history of the dead man in the painting, one Adriaen Adriaenszoon, alias Aris Kindt (or Aris the Kid).

At the same time, a physician in Groningen has recently conducted a medical experiment to dissect an arm so he could compare it to the dissected arm in this portrait. Contrary to the opinion of medical historians heretofore, who criticized the painting for certain anatomical inaccuracies, this recent study reveals that Rembrandt actually got it mostly right. Together, these new pieces of evidence give us reason to believe that Rembrandt may have worked from life on this painting. That is, he used a real cadaver as a model, and it’s even possible he may have known the dead man in question.

Therefore, the purpose of our current restoration is twofold: first and most practical is to remove a layer of old varnish, which has dimmed aspects of its coloring and possibly obscured certain elements of the painting. We want to bring the painting back to life, give it more vitality—health—as it were. My strategy will be to do as little to the painting as possible. Only to repair what needs to be repaired and to remove anything that’s been added that appears to be unnecessary. To bring out the painting that is already there and to eliminate any obscuring values.

The second purpose is investigative. We seek to explore how this new evidence informs our understanding of the painting. People sometimes invent stories about works of art based just on other stories; but as conservators we use the painting itself to tell the story in the same way that a forensic scientist might—looking for evidence of different possible scenarios. I will try to get a response from the painting itself. To look at it in good light, to write down what I see.

Claes likes to say we are conducting our own dissection of the
dissection masterpiece. Rembrandt, as it were, under the surgeon’s scalpel. The first step, the most important step, is simply to look at the painting. The work this first week is really about looking. To see the painting in natural light, with a torch, a head loupe, a scope, and much stronger light to get a sense of its physicality.

Then we can compare what we see with the naked eye to what we discover using x-radiographs. To figure out what is there. We already have an image in our minds from looking at it on the wall, but what can we discover from the brushstrokes? From the palette? From examining the painting technique, the use of pentimenti? The ground, the underpainting? Were there parts that changed over time? Or when he was painting?

Sometimes, as a conservator, I spend hours and hours just looking at a painting and very little time actually working on it. Every day, I come in and I look at the painting and I try to understand it a little bit more, before I do actual painting of any kind. I try not to do any painting at all, if I can avoid it. It is the painter’s job to paint. It is the restorer’s job to resist painting. You try to still your hand, to avoid using the brush. You must do as little as possible for the maximum possible effect.

You look and you look and you look, and then you have to decide what the goal is. For me, the decision to use my brush at all will be limited to fixing damages. But to get to that point, I first need to understand what’s meant to be in the picture and what’s not. I can’t be too speculative. I have to stick to the facts, to be able to talk about what you can prove or what you can see.

The doctors of the seventeenth century used to talk about “ocular testimony” when they looked at a body. That’s what we’re seeking here, too, with this technical study. We can devise our story, but it has to be based on what we can actually see.

So many stones came. They broke big things and small things. Bowls my mother made, the milk jug, eggs ready for market. There were never much to break and there’s nothing left to break anymore, that’s certain.

Everyone in Leiden knew Adriaen were to be strung up before word got to me. That’s why the boys called me witch. That’s why the stones came. They pulled cobblestones out the lane and threw them at my house. Broke windows. Sent things flying. “Witch!” they called me. “Crone!”

The voices weren’t just boys’. Some I knew from market, other times selling their wares. They were the same voices that shouted, “Clay pots, six for a stiver!” or “Goat’s cheese! Goat’s milk!” I could swear I heard Hendrijke the potter, and Maartje the wagoner’s wife. Them were voices I knew. “Hag!” they screamed. “Whore.”

There were no one else there but me, and, well, the babe in my belly. I’ve lived alone since Adriaen went. Mother died years ago
and father left before her. I hired a man once to tend the mill for a time, but when the earnings dried up he left, willing. The mill didn’t yield much and so I just tend to the animals, grow my patch of garden out back, manage the barn, and feed the chickens. The eggs bring a few stivers, and what little rye there is from the mill I ride to the bakers for barter. I never took money to lie with a man, no matter what them townsfolk like to say. Nor crafted any magic.

When I heard the first shouts, saw the stones, I ran to Doc Sluyter’s. His family were the one sheltered my great-aunt in the Alteration. She were a Catholic, you know, and they accused her of idolatry. The doc were surprised when he saw the bulge under my apron. That’s how long it’s been since we’ve seen him. He hushed my screaming and said it weren’t Spaniards this time. He sat me down and told his servant to leave us be.

“Adriaen was arrested in Amsterdam,” he said, after I’d caught my breath. “They sentenced him to death, Flora. He’s to go hanging. That’s the news from Amsterdam.”

He said it so quickly I didn’t get his meaning.

“Your Adriaen,” he said very slowly, “been caught in Amsterdam. They’ll hang him now. That’s why the townsfolk stone you. That’s why they curse your house.”

I said to the doc that he had to be wrong because they don’t hang a man for fighting and thieving and that’s all Adriaen ever did. Doc Sluyter shook his head. “He’s gone too far this time,” the doc said. “Tried to steal the cloak off a burgher. Used violence, they say. Tried to kill the man.” The look on his face were like a closed door. “The hangman will string him up and feel no remorse.”

I still don’t know why he said that part, the part about “no remorse,” because what does Doc Sluyter know about the hangman’s heart? I knew Adriaen didn’t try to kill someone. That weren’t who
he was. He were a weak and lost soul, my Adriaen, but he were never a cruel man, never like that: empty.

Then that door opened in the doc’s soul and he looked into my eyes and his own eyes went moist.

“That child you’re carrying,” he went on in his deepest voice, nodding to my belly, “is going to be the child of a hanged man. The bastard child of a murderer.”

That’s when I put both hands on my belly to protect my unborn child. I got angry, ’cause a doctor knows that evil words over pregnant belly can split a babe in two and make it come out two headed. I told him, “Don’t you talk so in front of my son.”

I’ve always known he’ll be a boy. From the way he sits in my belly and from the way he kicks right up against my ribs. I know, too, he’ll look just like Adriaen. I already named him. He is Carel, a free man.

Doc Sluyter kept talking, but he turned his face away from me this time. “There’s more,” he said. “They won’t bury him in Amsterdam. They’ll put him to the gibbet.”

I guess I fell down then, because when I opened my eyes next I were on his table. There were a lot of other men around me now, hovering like crows, all shaking their heads and clucking as if I were down with the black death. I could feel my chest and neck cupped. I could feel my skin tight and my wrists tingling where they’d stuck me. I heard one of them saying, “Isn’t it a pity for that child?” The rest of them murmuring.

I pushed myself up from that table and brushed off the cups, the glass cracking on the ground. Doc Sluyter shushed me and told me I needed rest, but I told him I didn’t want my unborn to be cleaved to pieces with their ominous words. The other men tried to hold me down, too, but I pushed back.

“It’ll be dangerous at the mill house,” said Doc, when I got to standing. “There are sure to be more stones.”

Another one of them said, “We’re only trying to protect you from the senseless fools out there who intend to hurt you. We know it’s not your fault that your man was a murderer.”

I told him, “Adriaen is no murderer. I knew him since he were a boy. You knew him, too. He were a child of this town, of Leiden. If the townsfolk won’t claim him, they’re as coldhearted as the executioner.”

They stood in silence and not one of them tried to correct me.

“A mob is cruel,” were all Doc said. “No reasoning with a mob about evil and goodness.”

I left Doc’s house, telling all them other crows not to follow.

The boys with their stones were there when I got home, like they’d said, so I went in through the side yard. That were Adriaen’s yard once. We lived side by side in them houses by the Rhine.

I went in the back door, hiding in my own house. For the rest of the morning, when the peltings came, I moved behind the wall and wrapped my belly in a blanket to drown out the shouting.

Some of them stones came through the windows. That’s how hard they threw, them boys. Them maids. They came into the house, thud, thud, crack. We don’t have much and now so much is broken. But I could stand behind the hearth and the stones didn’t hit us.

When it went quiet, I fixed things. I picked up the shards, the fallen chairs, overturned pitchers and mopped what had spilled. I collected the pieces and put them on a mantel.

Then it would start again and I would wait by the wall, singing to Carel in my belly. When it stopped, I’d tidy. When there were too many shards for the mantel, I put them into my apron. I took them out back so I could use them to border my garden.

There were a long stretch when the pelting stopped, and I thought maybe it were over. I listened to the silence. Then came a dark figure in the doorway. A black hat and cloak, a long carved cane.

With the light behind him, I could see no features of his face. I thought: all them curses have done their work. Death has come for me and the babe. Maybe from weakness, I mustered politeness. I said, please to come in and sit with us. I got up to heat the kettle.

Death walked in and sat at the table quietly, and when I brought him the cup of cider, I saw it were Father van Thijn from our church under that great black hat, that long sad face with his gray beard.

I got tired all over again, because I didn’t want to argue with the priest or have to ask his blessing.

The father didn’t take my cider. He looked around and saw all the broken pitchers and plates, shards on the mantel. It must’ve been him who’d told them to stop because finally it were really silent. I went flush with shame for us, me and Adriaen and our babe. Things are not right when a man of God has to visit a poor woman’s cottage.

“We are in the Lord’s hands,” I said quietly. “He will protect us.”

The father shook his head. He blurted out how it were wrong for people to believe in superstitions, witches, omens, and curses. He said it were wrong that the world were so backward and godless, even now in this modern century.

“The boys don’t know better, but the townsfolk should,” he said. “After all we’ve already been through, they should know.” Father van Thijn talked about Jesus and love and compassion. He said, as he does in sermons, that the greatest sinners benefit most from forgiveness. “It was his crime,” he said. “Now it’s his death. But that’ll be your cross to bear.” In his old age, he said, he sees
that only great love can overcome man’s cruelty. Only true hearts, people with courage to love, people with a mind to forgiveness.

“You will need strength,” the father said, as if he were coming to something, “but you must make the journey.”

Then Father van Thijn took out his purse. He put coins on the table before me. It were more money than I’d ever seen all at once. My first thought: a man of God should not have such money.

“It’s from the collections, Flora. For charitable works. Today it is for you. To help you and your family. Our church can spare it.”

I thought he meant for the pots, the broken glass.

“For the sake of the child that will be born,” he said. “You must leave this house. There will only be more stones and more curses. You must go to Amsterdam. To the town hall at the Dam. Tell them you are Adriaen’s betrothed. Show them your belly. Tell them about our church, and take this letter I’ve written.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a note, sealed and stamped with red wax.