Gerard de Lairesse, Portrait of Govard Bidloo, Copperplate engraving on paper(Abraham Blooteling, engraver), 1685.

Govard Bidloo was born in Amsterdam, in 1649. He was apprenticed to the Praelector of Anatomy of the Amsterdam Surgeons' Guild, Frederik Ruysch in the 1670s, prior to obtaining a Doctorate degree of medicin at Franeker Unviersity in 1682. During his years in Amsterdam, Bidloo was heavily involved in the theatre community through the writing and translation of many plays. It is here that Bidloo became acquainted with the artist, Gerard de Lairesse. Between the years of 1676 and 1682, Bidloo and de Lairesse collaborated to design 105 illustrations (to be later engraved by Peter and Philip van Gunst) for an anatomical atlas that Bidloo would publish in 1685.

Bidloo was appointed Professor of Anatomy at the Hague, which he held between the years of 1688 and 1694. During the early years of his Professorship at the Hague, Bidloo became acquainted with William III of Orange, the King of England, who took him on as a personal physician in 1689. In 1690, William III appointed Bidloo to act as General Superintendent of all civil and military hospitals in Holland, and in 1694, William III aided in obtaining a position for Bidloo again when he was appointed as Professor of Anatomy at the University of Leiden. Bidloo remained in Leiden until his death in 1713, during which he taught lectures in the anatomical theatre, and provided care for William III until his death in 1702.