She was
proud of a terra-cotta head of her ancestor, Admiral de Ruyter. The party
soon reached Rembrandt's celebrated "School of Anatomy," originally
painted for the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons. Tulp is in black coat with
lace collar and broad-brimmed soft hat, dissecting a sinew of the arm of
the corpse before him. He is explaining, with gesture of his left hand,
his theory to a group of Amsterdam surgeons. No painter ever before
succeeded in so riveting the attention of spectators in the presence of
death. The listeners appear altogether unconscious of the pallid corpse
that lies before them on the dissecting table.
Invited by Christine's mother, the young artists accompanied the De
Ruyters to Amsterdam, the commercial capital of Holland, with 300,000
inhabitants. They live on ninety islands formed by intersecting canals,
which are crossed by three hundred bridges. The buildings rest on
foundations of piles, or trees, which fact gave rise to Erasmus's jest,
that he knew a city where the people dwelt on tops of trees, like rooks.
Alfonso took Leo into the suburbs to see diamond polishing. The machinery
is run by steam, and the work is done largely by Portuguese Jews. These
precious stones are cut or sawed through by means of wires covered with
diamond dust, and the gems are polished by holding them against rapidly
revolving iron disks moistened with a mixture of diamond dust and oil.
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