The art of science: transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder and Golconda.

Science and art are, surprisingly, intimately linked to each other. Over the centuries, artists used their talent in order to depict with the greatest detail possible the human anatomy and later the histology of tissues, helping scientists comprehend better the world and human nature. From the opposite perspective, scientific images coming from observation or experimentation can constitute art since they can have form and beauty. An example is mitotic figures, particularly the atypical ones observed in cancer. The affinity between art and science is demonstrated herein, by their harmonic coexistence in one figure, and also by the ease and naturalness by which the phrases used by Magritte in order to describe one of his paintings, the famous "Golconda" can be paraphrased to describe a neoplasm, a transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder.