The Night Watch

Completed in 1642 for the Amsterdam Kloveniersdoelen, the headquarters of the city's civic guard, The Night Watch was commissioned by the militia company of Captain Cocq as one of several group portraits intended to decorate the great hall. At the time of its execution, Rembrandt was at the height of his commercial success and yet already pushing against the conventions that had made him wealthy; the same year the painting was delivered, his wife Saskia died, marking a personal and professional turning point. The work's massive scale, originally larger before strips were removed in 1715 to fit a new doorway in the Amsterdam Town Hall, was itself a statement of intent, asserting that a civic group portrait could carry the drama and moral weight of a history painting. Art historians have long noted that some of the commissioned figures are so deeply shadowed as to be nearly unidentifiable, a departure from the portrait conventions that guaranteed each patron equal prominence; whether this frustrated the subjects or they accepted Rembrandt's vision remains debated. The painting has resided in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam since 1808 and has survived two knife attacks and an acid attack across the twentieth century, each time undergoing painstaking restoration. It is routinely cited as the single most important work in the Rijksmuseum's collection and one of the defining achievements of Baroque painting in Northern Europe.