Before “Baywatch”, there was …
… No, not “Night Watch” – “Day Watch” – although Rembrandt’s 1642 conversation piece at the venerable Rijksmuseum will always be known as “Night Watch”. It is in fact “The Company of Captain Frans Cocq”, the militia that paid Rembrandt darned good money to paint their portrait in broad daylight, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.
A quadracentennial Rembrandt relapse, last of three parts
Fully 300 years after he did, someone realised they were looking at it through a gloom of grit and this wasn’t suppertime at all. They sent it to the cleaners and it came back ready for breakfast, much cheerier now, thankyou.
You can scour the Internet all you want, though, and most of the images of it are still grubby. Maybe there’s a lot of smog on the Web as well as smut. On the other hand, it looks better darker, psychological proof that the night tells better stories. If you haven’t already, rest your cursor on the image above for a comparison.
Anyway, it’s cheerier and in mint condition once more, although it’s said that if you “see it in person” (as it were), you can spot the zig-zag of slashes added in 1975 by someone who evidently thought he was Zorro. The restorers couldn’t quite stitch it up right after the unfortunate critiquing, but never mind, “Night Watch” had endured worse before, as we’ll see.
Captain Cocq (no “Star Trek” jokes, please) and 17 members of his civic militia guards paid Rembrandt a tidy 100 guilders each to convey them in pigment. Sheer vanity, one might say, since they hired six other artists to do likewise at the same time. See the rest.
