Reading visual texts about dentistry

Abstract

This article aims to show how, until the XVIIth century, the visual representations of Dentistry materialize its devaluation in relation to Medicine represented in Rembrandt´s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp (1632). The theoretical framework guiding this analysis is anchored in the concepts expressed in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (VOLOŠINOV, 1986), assuming that the visual text, as the verbal text, reflects and refracts a sociohistorical-cultural – therefore, ideological - reality, exterior to the paintings.