Chirurgijnsgilde te Amsterdam, toegangspenning voor de hortus medicus van Andreas Bonn, professor in de anatomie en de chirurgie 1771

This is a silver admission medal for the Hortus Medicus of Andreas Bonn in Amsterdam. It features a skeleton with a scythe, standing beside an hourglass on one side, and a vase of flowers with the inscription ‘Hortus Medicus’ on the other. The skeleton, often shown with a scythe, is an age-old symbol of mortality, reminding us of life’s fleeting nature. It appears across cultures, from ancient Greek pottery to medieval morality plays, and its purpose is always the same: to incite contemplation of our inevitable end. The hourglass is a symbol of time passing, each grain of sand representing a second ticking away, further reinforcing the awareness of how brief life is. However, the vase of flowers on the reverse offers a counterpoint. Flowers have long represented life, beauty, and renewal. Here we see the constant tension between life and death, decay and growth. It serves as a visual reminder of the surgeon's work: in the face of death, to cultivate life. This dialectic tension, seen here, echoes through the ages in different forms, reminding us of the human obsession with understanding our temporal existence.