A barber-surgeon examining a girl

This 1670 scene of a barber-surgeon examining a girl belongs to Dou's extensive series of medical genre scenes that were enormously popular with Dutch collectors who found in them a mixture of humor, commentary on human vanity and vulnerability, and virtuosic miniaturist painting. Barber-surgeons occupied an ambiguous social position — technically skilled but socially inferior to physicians — and their depicted examinations of patients carried both medical documentary value and comic undertones. The 1670 date places this in Dou's late career, when his reputation was thoroughly established and his medical genre scenes commanded high prices from collectors across Europe including the French king.

Dou's trademark precision is evident in the rendering of the surgical instruments, glass vessels, and textured fabrics, all illuminated with the controlled lighting that defined the Leiden fijnschilder school.