by Matthew Cobb
UK readers might want to watch the third episode of Adam Rutherford’s new BBC TV series, The Beauty of Anatomy, which is on tonight, Wednesday 27th, at 20:30 on BBC4 (I’m afraid it clashes with the Great British Bakeoff if you’re into that). Adam’s 5-part series traces the history of anatomy through both the great anatomists and the art they inspired.The third episode, which is about Rembrandt, features me talking about science in the 17th century Dutch Republic. As this trailer shows, it also has Adam’s wonderfully genuine response to The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp.
The first two episodes, dealing with Galen and Leonardo, and with Vesalius are available on the BBC iPlayer for those of you in the UK – for the next few weeks only. Someone has uploaded the first two episodes to YouTube (see below), but I’m not sure how long they’ll last. If the third episode is posted, we’ll post that later.
Each programme is only 30 minutes long, but captures both the spirit of the time, and the art that was created. Warning – these contain scenes of dissection of human bodies.
You can also watch this episode of a fantastic 2013 Dutch TV series about the Dutch Golden Age, which focused on Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam, and includes a section of me talking about Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson. The programme is in Dutch, but sadly I don’t speak Dutch, so my bits are in English. They are at around 10:20 – 13:20, and 16:00 – 20:30, and 31:50 – 34:00 (NB, there are some gruesome bits in the Dutch sections…)
Trailer not working for me; not sure if it’s a US/UK thing, or just me. Either way, I haz a sad 🙁
Ditto. ( the not working part, not the sad 🙂 )
Wonderful. I will try to watch these. The classical painting known as The Anatomy Lesson always reminds me of my dissertation research on crayfish development. When presenting it, I would always start with this perfect cartoon.