Excerpt from the Night Watch. The company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburgh prepares to march out, better known as the Night Watch, is a militia painting by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) and was completed in 1642. The painting is owned by the municipality of Amsterdam and has been part of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam collection since 1808. The canvas shows the two archers from the title, accompanied by other militiamen, as well as a few extras, as they line up. The Night Watch is one of the most famous paintings in the world, and the painting was Rembrandt's contribution to a project of seven works, six militia pieces and a portrait of the target men of the Kloveniersschutters, commissioned by the Amsterdam militia guild for the Kloveniersdoelen's grand ballroom. It is Rembrandt's first and only militia piece. Compared to other canvases of the genre, Rembrandt's work is a lively and bold composition, in which the militia does not pose in the usual static arrangement, but is depicted while grouping. The canvas is a rich work of baroque complexity, in which realism and symbolism are skillfully combined in a masterful integration of movement, light and colour, brought into harmony by a delicate pattern of chiaroscuro. In these aspects, the Night Watch represents the pinnacle of Rembrandt's painting.
