A physician-virtuoso in his cabinet, examining a flask of urine brought by a lady. Oil painting by a painter in the circle of Gerard Thomas, early 18th century.

In a large room, on the left a man seated at a table turns to the right to look up at a flask of urine which he holds in his left hand. In the centre stands an elaborately dressed lady, presumably having brought the urine for diagnosis. Behind them, a nurse holds a young child (the lady's child?). On the right, an archway joins the room to a hallway in which is a staircase leading up to the first floor: at ground floor level in the hallway a surgeon performs an operation (perhaps a tooth extraction) on a seated patient. In the right foreground two boys: one plays with the lady's dog (its ruff is made from the same material as the bows on her shoes), while the other kneels to apply bellows to a brazier for pharmaceutical procedures

The man holding the urine-flask wears a fur-lined robe. The paraphernalia around him identify him as a medical and surgical practitioner, apothecary, chymist, scholar of natural history and philosophy, collector of objects of virtù. The table, left, is covered with a Turkey rug, and holds books, pharmacy jars, a shell, an elaborately sculpted vessel, and the wicker basket in which urine flasks were carried. Pharmacy jars and alchemical apparatus stand on the window sill, right, and on the ground in front of the table, along with books, papers, a mortar placed on a tripod carved with ram's heads, a horse's skull, a string instrument and shells. Left background, a chimney supported by a caryatid and a telamon, with above a large framed painting of hounds attacking a boar in the style of Frans Snyders or Paul de Vos. Many other furnishings and pieces of equipment are shown

1700

1 painting : oil on canvas ; canvas 81 x 115.5 cm

Select images of this work were taken by the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum: WT/D/1/20/1/65/83

The subject and composition are characteristic of Gerard Thomas of Antwerp, but the two elongated figures of the lady and the woman holding the baby are in a different style (letter from Mr Fred Meijer, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, 21 May 2002)

Wellcome Collection 45024i