The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp | Rembrandt van Rijn, 1632
Dr. Victor Frankenstein contemplates the murder of a renowned intellectual in Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein. He has invited this man, a man with no living relatives, to harvest his brain for an experiment, and this murder will be the biggest step into moral depravity in the name of his creation. His plan is simple: lure the man to the top of the staircase in order to view the painting that hangs above it, then, once he is enraptured in the painting, push him through the banister to his death and make the whole thing look like a terrible accident.
The painting is Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, one of the Flemish artist's most celebrated works. The painting depicts several doctors surrounding a corpse as a man, presumably Tulp, teaches them about the tendons and muscles in the human arm. However, none of the doctors are looking at the body, and are instead staring at the pages of a large book just beyond it. The corpse also appears to have two right hands, a refraction of the human form rendered invisible to these doctors by their own studiousness. A murder is committed beneath this painting in the name of science by a man perilously blind to the reality of his creation, choosing instead to focus on the theoretical. It’s easy to become monstrous when you ignore humanity.