A rare Japanese scroll painting depicting a dissection scene by Dutch doctors

Edo period, early 19th century

Painted on silk, Approx. H. 40 x 60 cm (the painting)

Provenance:
The scroll is accompanied by a note that it was a gift from the renowned Japanese surgeon Hanaoka Seishū to his disciple Iwata Hirozai; after which it ended up in a private collection.

This unique scroll shows a fictitious dissection scene featuring two Dutch doctors inspired by cadaver dissections of the time. Although showing Western influence, the internal anatomy of the female subject is illustrated in the traditional Chinese-Japanese medicinal style. The unknown artist of this scroll masterfully blends various cultural elements, including foreigners and Japanese traditions, beautiful women, life and death, and the pursuit of knowledge.

The only other known similar scene, depicting a Dutch doctor dissecting a Japanese female corpse, is known only from the collection of Dr. Eugen Holländer. This piece was published in the Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift, No. 47, 1908; and Holländer’s book Äskulap und Venus: Eine Kultur- und Sittengeschichte im Spiegel des Arztes, Propyläen-Verlag, Berlin, 1928, p. 287. Dr. Holländer’s collection was stored at the Kaiserin Friedrich-Haus in Berlin but lost in 1945.