A Physician Taking the Pulse

A Physician Taking the Pulse, in the Wellcome Collection, is one of the series of medical consultation paintings that made Steen one of the most represented Dutch artists in that collection's holdings. The act of pulse-taking in seventeenth-century Dutch medicine was the physician's primary diagnostic tool — a ceremony that demonstrated professional knowledge while revealing relatively little, since pulse reading was more art than science in this period. Steen understood the comic potential in the gap between the physician's authoritative performance and the actual simplicity (or obvious emotional nature) of the diagnosis. His pulse-taking scenes consistently explored this comedy through the contrast between the doctor's concentrated professional manner and the patient's evident real state. The undated work is consistent with Steen's mature period treatment of the medical-encounter subject.

The pulse-taking scene concentrated action on the physical contact between physician's hand and patient's wrist, requiring close compositional attention to the hands as the scene's visual focus. Interior lighting in warm, domestic tones created the intimate setting appropriate to a private consultation. Figure expressions were carefully differentiated to sustain the comedic contrast between professional and patient.