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From around 1650 until well into the nineteenth century, Frederik Ruysch enjoyed international fame as an anatomist. He owed his renown to a preparation method that greatly aided early-modern scientists in their exploration of the human body and transformed dissection from a messy business into a widely admired art. Ruysch s anatomical collection was one of Amsterdam s tourist attractions, for his embalmed bodies were astonishingly lifelike in appearance. The visitors who gazed with amazement at his preparations included the Russian tsar Peter the Great, who was so moved by the sight of an embalmed boy that he kneeled down to kiss him. The tsar later bought Ruysch s entire collection and had all the specimens shipped to St Petersburg, where they still attract visitors from all over the world. As the son-in-law of the well-known architect Pieter Post and the father of the accomplished painter Rachel Ruysch, Frederik Ruysch crossed the boundaries between art and science with ease. During his lifetime, the artistic side of his work sometimes provoked criticism from those in academic circles, but it is precisely his reputation as a virtuoso anatomist whose mastery of the arts of dissection and preservation enabled him to make preparations that seemed to defy death itself which has continued for centuries to inspire others, from Balzac to Stephen Jay Gould.
About the author
Luuc Kooijmans, PhD (1985) in History, Utrecht University, was Assistant Professor of History at the University of Amsterdam from 1986 to 1995. He is the author of
Friendship and the Art of Survival in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1997) and
Love on Order: The Courtly Life of Willem Frederik van Nassau (2000). In 2004 he was awarded the Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation Humanities Prize for his oeuvre, and in 2008 he received the Great History Prize for
Dangerous Knowledge: Insight and Fear in the Days of Jan Swammerdam (Bert Bakker, 2007).
Diane Webb had a long career as a professional musician before devoting herself entirely to translation. Specialising in historical and art-historical subjects, she has translated books by H.L. Wesseling, Leonard Blussé, Maarten Prak, Geert Warnar, Arianne Baggerman and Rudolf Dekker. She was also a member of the team responsible for the new translation of the complete letters of Vincent van Gogh. For her translation of Herman Pleij's
Colors Demonic & Divine: Shades of Meaning in the Middle Ages & After she was awarded the Vondel Prize for Dutch Translation in 2005.
