Art may seem inessen­tial to those who make the big deci­sions in times of cri­sis. But it nev­er seemed more nec­es­sary to artists work­ing in the time of plague. So it was 366 years ago when Rem­brandt paint­ed a por­trait of his son, Titus, in a monk’s robe in 1660. Eight years lat­er, Titus was dead from plague, which had only a few years ear­li­er killed Hen­drick­je Stof­fels, Rembrandt’s for­mer house­keep­er and sec­ond wife, who helped raise Titus, Rembrandt’s only child to sur­vive into adult­hood.

These unimag­in­able loss­es “con­tributed to the tragedy and anguish we see in Rem­brandt’s late self-por­traits,” writes The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones. Dur­ing the plague, Rem­brandt also used his work as social cri­tique.

His etch­ing The Rat-Poi­son Ped­dler shows, “in a sense,” the Min­neapo­lis Insti­tute of Art’s Tom Rassieur tells the Star Tri­bune, “the guy who pur­ports to be helping—the exterminator—is prob­a­bly doing as much to spread the dis­ease as any­one else. That relates to [crit­i­cism] of our lead­er­ship today.” In his last years, Rem­brandt paint­ed self-por­traits of his iso­la­tion and grief that found a new audi­ence dur­ing the COVID lock­down.

Else­where in the Nether­lands, Rembrandt’s con­tem­po­rary Johannes Ver­meer was no stranger to the kind of social­ly iso­lat­ed world we found our­selves in dur­ing COVID. “His home­town of Delft was strick­en with plague sev­er­al times in the artist’s life­time. In 1635 and 1636 over 2,000 peo­ple died, and in the mid-1650s and mid-1660s hun­dreds more,” notes Breeze Bar­ring­ton at CNN. The qual­i­ties we most asso­ciate with Vermeer’s work, the soli­tude and atten­tive pres­ence, were devel­oped dur­ing time spent in iso­la­tion.

“In this time of forced iso­la­tion,” Friso Lam­mertse, cura­tor of 17th-cen­tu­ry Dutch paint­ing at the Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam, not­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Vermeer’s work “can point us at the fact that extreme beau­ty can be found just in our room.” The Rijksmu­se­um did­n’t just rec­om­mend art in the pan­demic’s state of alone­ness, but also dou­bled its col­lec­tion of free, high-res­o­lu­tion works online, by Rem­brandt, Ver­meer, and a host of oth­er artists who used art to cope with loss and lone­li­ness dur­ing the plagues of their times. The muse­um now offers 840,000 dig­i­tized images in total.

The muse­um promised to “bring the muse­um to you,” and it has deliv­ered not only with its exten­sive dig­i­tal col­lec­tion, free for down­load­ing, shar­ing and edit­ing with a free Rijksmu­se­um account, but also with infor­ma­tive series on its web­site. Art is essen­tial in the best and worst of times, when it shows us how to look close­ly at our­selves, our loved ones, and our sur­round­ings, and treat life with more care and atten­tion. Enter the Rijksmu­se­um online col­lec­tions here.

An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces by Rem­brandt Includ­ed!

Explore the New 717-Gigapix­el Scan of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, the Most Detailed Pho­to Ever Tak­en of a Work of Art

See the Com­plete Works of Ver­meer in Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty: Google Makes Them Avail­able on Your Smart­phone

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

Folks with a pass­ing knowl­edge of ukiyo‑e, the Japan­ese wood­block print art form pop­u­lar in the 17th through 19th cen­turies, will be famil­iar with its land­scapes, as well as its por­traits of cour­te­sans and kabu­ki actors. But often these prints were edu­ca­tion­al, as demon­strat­ed by these very odd anatom­i­cal prints that pro­mote good health as it relates to our inter­nal work­ings.

Long before ani­mat­ed mon­sters warned us about our mucus-filled chests, Japan­ese artists like Uta­gawa Kunisa­da (1786–1865) filled the guts of these men and women with lit­tle work­ers, mak­ing sure the human body worked like a func­tion­ing vil­lage or town.

In the first print, Inshoku Yojo Kaga­mi (“Mir­ror of the Phys­i­ol­o­gy of Drink­ing and Eat­ing”), a man dines on fish and drinks sake. Inside, lit­tle men scur­ry about a pool wrapped in intestines, stoke a fire under the heart, all the while a schol­ar keeps ref­er­ence mate­ri­als near­by. Down below lone­ly fig­ures guard the “urine gate” and the “feces gate,” sure­ly one of the worst jobs in all the body econ­o­my.

One of Kunisada’s stu­dents cre­at­ed a print for the women, focus­ing on the repro­duc­tive organs, called Boji Yojo Kaga­mi (“Rules of Sex­u­al Life”). Keen-eyed view­ers will note that the minia­ture work­ers here are all women, so at least there’s some equal­i­ty at play.

The two prints were meant as instruc­tion­al, point­ing out best health prac­tices, and warn­ing against overindul­gence and excess.

Oth­er prints are just as inven­tive: a back and abdomen cov­ered in chil­dren play­ing famil­iar games; anoth­er fea­tur­ing pop­u­lar kabu­ki actors stand­ing in for var­i­ous organs. (Now, that is just cry­ing out for a mod­ern remake). The last print shows a preg­nant woman whose bel­ly con­tains Tainai jukkai no zu (Ten Realms with­in the body), a Bud­dhist idea that you can read more about here. As for their func­tion inside the womb, that is for oth­ers of a high­er con­scious­ness to dis­cern.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map­ping Emo­tions in the Body: A Finnish Neu­ro­science Study Reveals Where We Feel Emo­tions in Our Bod­ies

A Sub­way Map of Human Anato­my: All the Sys­tems of Our Body Visu­al­ized in the Style of the Lon­don Under­ground

“Man as Indus­tri­al Palace,” the 1926 Lith­o­graph Depict­ing the Human Body as a Mod­ern Fac­to­ry, Comes to Life in a New Ani­ma­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.