... are even more horrifying than Cornelis Saftleven's. Having said last Thursday how rare it was to see seventeenth-century Dutch artists tackle medieval demons and animal allegories, I notice this week that "Monster Brains" has put up another one, so maybe it's not. Egbert van Heemskerck's style – or styles in fact, because there were two painters called Egbert van Heemskerck around at the time, apparently unrelated, maybe even three according to wikipedia, and noone knows who painted what – anyway, his/their style is far less photo-realistic than Saftleven's, and I don't just mean worse – maybe cruder, but that's part of its terrifying power, and I'm pretty sure the pictures are meant to terrify. One picture is anyway. Not the sketch above, that's just a bit of fun (apparently satirising the British Navy). The harder stuff I've decided to spare you, unless you're absolutely sure you want to see a painting called "The Monkey Surgeon".
Let me describe "The Monkey Surgeon". It looks like it could have been painted in a single night, or maybe even a minute: It shows a darkened operating room lit by a
single, smoking brazier, crowded with braying, misshapen animals, eys and teeth glinting in the murk. A pig's head and other offal fill two buckets on the floor, while a split
ox's carcass and other, less identifiable animal shreds hang from the ceiling. In the centre, its muzzle hidden beneath a blood-stained turban, something pulls the entrails from a kitten.
So if you want to see that, it's HERE.
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