The Tooth Puller

The Tooth Puller of 1628, in the Vlaamse Kunstcollectie, plunges into the well-established Flemish-Netherlandish genre of medical and quasi-medical scenes depicting itinerant tooth extractors. These scenes occupying the borderland between genre painting and moralising imagery: the charlatan tooth puller, performing operations in public squares for credulous onlookers, was a recognised social type associated with quackery, deception, and the credulity of ordinary people. Lucas van Leyden's famous print of The Dentist had established the visual vocabulary in the sixteenth century, and Caravaggio's Italian followers adapted it to their large-scale, dramatically lit canvases. Rombouts's 1628 treatment, at the height of his Caravaggesque phase, would have brought the characteristic Flemish earthiness and physical immediacy to a subject that is simultaneously comic, grotesque, and socially observant. The patient's grimace of pain, the crowd of amused or alarmed spectators, and the practitioner's theatrical confidence together create a rich social narrative.

The scene's focal point — the moment of extraction, the patient's opened mouth, the instrument in the operator's hand — demands precise technical attention at the compositional centre. Strong light sources illuminate the patient's face and the operation itself while relegating surrounding spectators to partial shadow. Rombouts uses a variety of facial expressions across the crowd to sustain narrative interest beyond the central action.