Franciscus sylvius painting shredded

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To the right-hand side, a woman in pink coat with white bonnet and apron, is sitting on a low bench. Dutch writer and painter Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719) wrote: “Professor Silvius, welke laatste dikwerf verzogt, dat al wat hy maakte voor hem mogt wezen” [Professor Sylvius, the latter who often asked that all what he made might be for him] (Houbraken, 1721, p.

A reconstruction of his home showed that he had 22 paintings in his dining room (including the five senses by Jan Miense Molenaer), 34 in his large salon, 26 in a side chamber, 16 in the upper back chamber, and 42 (including Van Dyck’s portrait of King Charles of England) in the master bedroom that was arranged as a kind of Kunstkammer.

Apparently, he did not collect everything from his surroundings, as is demonstrated by the fact that he did not have any of the moralizing genre pieces by Jan Steen (1626-1679) or landscapes of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656).

The Quack and (Brain)Stones

Sylvius’s house in Leyden at Rapenburg 31.

Since Jheronimus Bosch’s painting “Cutting the stone,” similar scenes have been depicted in paintings and engravings during the 16th and 17th century (see World Neurology 2017, January, pp.

Their two children also died at a young age. 51-5.

 

Houbraken A (1721/1976). It was hanging in Sylvius’s front room. 6-7). A man in front of her seems to be explaining what is happening; he is pointing to the quack.

Two other persons, one with a red cap and the other a black beret, behind that man are discussing the scene.

Around the table in front of him, we see adult people, probably peasants listening and looking to the objects on the table. Arriving in Leyden, he bought a nice house at Rapenburg (on a canal) no. He was the University"s Vice-Chancellor in 1669-1670.

He researched the structure of the brain and was credited as the discoverer of the cleft in the brain known as Sylvian fissure by Caspar Bartholin in his 1641 book Casp.

franciscus sylvius painting shredded

He had it converted (for 10.500 guilders) into a distinguished home with dining room and salon.

Other houses at the Rapenburg were owned by upper-class Leiden citizens, including city official, merchants, and like Sylvius, university professors. Sylvius was also an avid patron and collector of art. Descendant from a Protestant family from northern France (the city of Cambrai that at the time was situated in the southern Netherlands), Franciscus dele Boë (1614-1672), also known as Sylvius, was born in the German town of Hanau, east of Frankfurt-am-Main.

Sylvius by Frans van Mieris I (1665, oil on
panel, 18,8×14,2 cm, New York, private
collection; see also The Leiden Collection
FM-104).

He studied medicine in Sedan and Leyden, made a peregrination to southern German universities and defended a thesis at the university of Basel, Switzerland (1637).

Part III Amsterdam, Israël (see also http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/houb005groo01_01/colofon.php accessed October 1st, 2020).

 

Smith PH (1999). He adhered to a kind of chemical humoral pathology that became known as iatrochemistry, in which effervescense, a vehement reaction between acid and alkaline secretions occur, for instance, in the right ventricle of the heart or the duodenum.

Collecting Masterpieces

Sylvius and his wife / “The music lesson”
by Frans van Mieris I (1672, oil on
panel, 41×31 cm, courtesy Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden – Gemäldegalerie
Alte Meister, Dresden, inv.

After practicing medicine in his hometown Hanau he returned to Leiden in 1639 to lecture. During the plague of 1669, Sylvius became severely ill, but survived. He graduated a second time the following year at Leyden university.

He became famous for his anatomy lessons, at the time including physiology. He gave bedside teaching in the nearby Caeciliahospital and studied the pathological changes at autopsy.

Fissure of Sylvius

Fissura Sylvii.

He attracted many foreign students, including Danish Niels Stensen (“Steno”; 1638-1688), who wrote that Sylvius’s method of brain dissection was a combination of the ancient Galenic approach and the more recent method of Costanzo Varolio (1543-1575).

The latter cut the brain from its base to above, thereby improving the visualization of structures at the base, including the cranial nerves and the pons (Varolius).