A Physician Examining a Urine Flask

This physician examining a urine flask from around 1644 represents one of Dou's most frequently depicted subjects. Uroscopy — diagnosing illness by examining urine — was a standard medical practice in seventeenth-century Holland, and the image of a physician holding a flask to the light was a recognized medical genre with both documentary and comic dimensions. Dou's treatment brings his fijnschilder virtuosity to the physician's scholarly setting, with books, instruments, and the flask rendered in the minutest detail. The circa 1644 date suggests this may be from a group of genre scenes Dou produced in the mid-1640s when his style was fully mature and his production at its most systematic.

The physician holds the flask up to the light in a carefully staged composition, with Dou rendering the translucent urine in the glass vessel with the kind of optical precision that made his works technical marvels.