A Toothdrawer Concealing the Key from the Patient

Image credit: Wellcome Collection

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Notes

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The painting shows a surgical operator approaching a young woman in order to extract a tooth. One of the themes of the painting is the contrast between the two figures: he is old, she is young; his clothes are drab and scruffy, hers are colourful and neat; he is dirty and unshaven, she is well-scrubbed. At the centre of the composition, her clean pink hand is juxtaposed to his mottled grey hand, his grimy fingernails to her clear-skinned neck. She is trustingly exposing her person, he is deceptively hiding behind his back the instrument of his imminent assault. The painter was a professor at the academy of fine arts in Urbino, and one of his paintings is in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. He was a contemporary of the composer Giacomo Puccini, some of whose operas are likewise composed of sordid events among working people rather than the high deeds of gods or princes.

Wellcome Collection

London

Title

A Toothdrawer Concealing the Key from the Patient

Medium

oil on canvas

Measurements

H 52 x W 38.5 cm

Accession number

44610i

Acquisition method

purchased by Henry S. Wellcome, c.1900–1936

Work type

Painting

Inscription description

L. Nezzo

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Wellcome Collection

183 Euston Road, London, Greater London NW1 2BE England

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