A single day in Amsterdam, 1632. The Surgeons Guild has commissioned a young artist named Rembrandt to paint Dr. Nicolaes Tulp as he performs a medical dissection. In the swirl of anticipation and intrigue surrounding the event, we meet an extraordinary constellation of men and women whose lives hinge, in some way, on Dr. Tulp s anatomy lesson. There is Aris the Kid, the condemned coat thief whose body is to be used for the dissection; Flora, his pregnant lover; Jan Fetchet, the curio dealer who acquires corpses for the doctor s work; the great Rene Descartes, who will attend the dissection in his quest to understand where the human soul resides; and the Dutch master himself, who feels a shade uneasy about this assignment.
As the story builds to its dramatic conclusion, circumstances conspire to produce a famous painting and an immortal painter. Vividly rendered, masterfully written, "The Anatomy Lesson" is a story of mind and body, death and love and redemptive power of art."