About this item
Set in one day in 1632, The Anatomy Lesson is a stunning portrayal of Golden Age Amsterdam and a brilliantly imagined back-story to Rembrandt's first great work of art. Told from several points of view, ranging from a curio dealer who collects bodies for the city’s chief anatomist to philosopher Rene Descartes, the novel opens on the morning of the medical dissection that is to be recorded by the twenty-six-year-old artist from Leiden who has yet to attach his famous signature to a painting. As the story builds to its dramatic and inevitable conclusion, the events that transpire throughout the day sway Rembrandt to make fundamental changes to his initial composition. These changes will remain mysteries for centuries until a young art historian closely examines the painting in the twenty-first century, and makes surprising discoveries about the painter, his process, and his genius for capturing enduring truths about human nature in a single moment.
About the Author
Nina Siegal has been a regular freelance contributor for since 2012. Based in Amsterdam, she covers museums, exhibitions, art restoration and attribution issues, art world discoveries and legal cases, profiles of conductors, filmmakers, dancers and other cultural figures, and culture in a socio-political context. An occasional general-news reporter, she has also written about migration issues, emerging political parties and legal cases in the Netherlands. Siegal began reporting for in 1997 as a stringer for the San Francisco bureau, and worked for ' "The City" section in New York from 1998 to 2000, covering Harlem and The Bronx. After that, she spent four years as the cultural news and art market reporter for in New York. Siegal was born in New York City, graduated with a BA in English Literature from Cornell University and received her MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. In addition to , her freelance writing has appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines, including the , and the . She was the launching editor of , managing editor of , and a founding creative editor of , a Dutch art magazine. Nina has written two novels: (Nan A. Talese/Knopf Doubleday, 2014) and (HarperCollins, 2008) . For her fiction, she has received numerous grants and fellowships, including a Fulbright Fellowship in Creative Writing, two MacDowell Colony fellowships, and the post-graduate Jack Leggett Fellowship from Iowa. Her first novel was top finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship.
