Why This Is Rembrandt's Masterpiece

Rembrandt's painting, "The Night Watch"

perhaps the most famous work of his long career

and of the Dutch golden age generally

is not set at night,

and it's not really a "watch" either.

It's a painting of the militia company of district two under the command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq.

Which is also its true, long, original name.

A century later

After years of varnish and low light darkened the canvas

Someone called it "The Night Watch," and it stuck.

Because, well, that's what it looked like

In fact, "The Night Watch" was meant to be a day-time scene

Just like other portraits of the Dutch civic guards:

groups of well-to-do Amsterdam citizens

tasked with keeping the peace should threats come to the city walls.

Over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

civic guard portraits became a genre all it's own,

and as painting in the Netherlands moved away from

spiritual subject matter and towards the secular,

artists welcomed commission work from these wealthy guilds

because they wanted large group portraits again

and again

and again.

But if you wanna know why Rembrandt's

is the only civic guard painting that makes it into most school curriculums

all you have to do is look at it.

Commissioned to do what all the others had done, show off the paying members of the guild,

Rembrandt takes the genre

and explodes his vision through it.

"The Night Watch" is an eruption of action, shadow, and light

with drama that's more suited to

a Biblical or historical epic,

not seventeen guys from peacetime Amsterdam.

No offense to Captain Cocq.

So what makes "The Night Watch" so great?

Well, what hits me right away

is the balance that Rembrandt strikes between chaos and unity.

He clearly wanted to create a canvas with a lot of movement,

but the challenge was how to make that movement,