ABSTRACT
Early modern genre painting offers valuable insights into how early modern laypeople perceived uroscopy and its ritualized nature. Some paintings show a doctor performing both uroscopy and pulse diagnosis at the same time. Dutch genre painting is widely praised today for its fascinating naturalistic reproduction of even minute details, a sense of perfection which sometimes approaches modern photorealism. Artists took pride in it and tried to out do one another. From the perspective of the artists, uroscopy also allowed them to demonstrate their exquisite skills. Art historians have so far focused almost entirely on the paintings of the second type that treat "the doctor's visit". In respect to paintings about lovesickness, art historians have long taken the view that genre painters intended to ridicule doctors in their practice of uroscopy and to attack uroscopy as a long outdated procedure. They have corroborated this interpretation by pointing at the critical and often polemical writings of physicians about uroscopy.
