Basically, the matter is incomprehensible and still a mystery to this day: for three hundred years one of the most famous paintings in the world has been incomplete, fragmentary, mutilated.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam had almost three million visitors a year before the pandemic, and most of them are likely to have had at least a brief glimpse of Rembrandt's "Night Watch".

But not everyone will have been aware that they were standing in front of a work of art that was vigorously cropped centuries ago.

Today one would speak of a barbaric act, at that time it was probably just the shallow triumph of pragmatism over art, whose claims to eternity can be nullified with simple scissors.

Hubert Spiegel

Editor in the features section.

  • Follow I follow

    Rembrandt completed the “Night Watch” in 1642. The painting was commissioned for the Rifle Guild, who wanted to decorate their new ballroom in the magnificent building of the “Kloveniersdoelen” with it. There the picture hung initially together with six other marksmen's pieces. In 1715 this ensemble was torn apart and the "night watch" was transferred to the former town hall, which has served as the royal palace since 1808. Here the “night watch” was supposed to be housed in a room whose name sounds like a warning sign. Because the “Small War Council Room” was actually too small for the format that Rembrandt had chosen for his work. There was not enough space between two doors for the hanging, but instead of looking for another place, scissors or a knife were used and the painting was cut on all four sides.The left margin suffered the greatest loss. Since then, 64.4 centimeters have been missing here. The overall format melted from 393.1 x 507.4 centimeters to 379.5 x 436 centimeters. Who ordered the circumcision, who carried it out, whether it was the result of long deliberations in the “Little War Council Room” or was carried out spontaneously, all of this is unknown today. Since then, there has been no trace of the cut off parts of the “Night Watch”.

    Entry into the hall of honor

    Rembrandt died in poverty in 1669.

    As early as 1656 he was declared insolvent, his house and his extensive collection had to be auctioned without the proceeds being sufficient to pay off the debts.

    His paintings remained coveted, but by the beginning of the eighteenth century his reputation had suffered badly.

    It was only in the course of the nineteenth century that Rembrandt achieved his status as the Dutch national painter, which led to the "Night Watch" being transferred to the Rijksmuseum, which opened in 1885, as if in a triumphal procession.

    The twenty-four men who carried the painting sang the national anthem as they entered the museum's “Hall of Honor”.

    If you cross the cathedral-like structure, you will pass the “Happy Drinker” by Frans Hals and one of the gorgeous still lifes by Willem Claeszoon Heda in the first side chapel on the right, while another chapel diagonally opposite is dedicated to four works by Vermeer. The main altar in this art-religious production is Rembrandt's “Night Watch”.

    Two years ago the Rijksmseum started “Operation Night Watch”, the most comprehensive study of the painting to date.

    The results of the latest research methods were used, among other things, to feed artificial neural networks in such a way that they could reconstruct the missing parts of the "night watch".

    They were printed on panels that are now expected to frame and complete the original painting by mid-September.

    What these missing parts must have looked like is known from a contemporary copy that the painter Gerrit Lundens probably made on behalf of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq.

    He is the man with the red sash in the center of the picture.

    Who pays, is the focus?

    But as you can see now when you stand in front of the reconstruction, Rembrandt had not placed Captain Cocq and the man next to him, Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburgh, at the center of his composition, but placed them to the right of the center. At the left edge three more figures can now be seen, the powder boy in the front left is holding onto a railing, the helmet of the shooter on the far right is now completely visible again, the space above the flag turns out to be higher. Rembrandt's original composition appears less static, but far more dynamic than the cropped version: a situation of departure.

    In about three months, when the missing parts are removed again, the officer with the red sash and his companion move back into the center of the picture. Of the 1,600 guilders Rembrandt received from the riflemen as a fee, they probably contributed the largest share.