Art, Anatomy & Medicine  New Walk!

A Medical Tour of the National Gallery

There’s more than paint on these canvases. There’s blood, disease, dissection, diagnosis, miracle cures and death.

See the National Gallery through the eyes of a doctor.

Michelangelo and Leonardo dissected human bodies to discover what lay beneath the skin. Saints Cosmas and Damian were physicians as well as martyrs. Angels bring miraculous cures for blindness. Memento mori whisper an uncomfortable truth: life is short.

And then there’s the darker stuff. Plague. Syphilis. Quackery. Disease hidden in plain sight. Doctors who became patrons of art. Artists whose own medical conditions may have affected what, and perhaps even how, they painted.

Look closely and some of the greatest pictures in the National Gallery become something else entirely: medical records, anatomical investigations, warnings, cures, symptoms and clues.

A fascinating new way of looking at old masters.

And your guide? A doctor.