The Night Watch, or Who Killed Captain Hasselburg

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s “The Night Watch” is considered one of the most mysterious paintings in world art. Researchers list about fifty riddles. For example: the depiction of a strange girl in a golden outfit; two right gloves held in the captain Frans Banning Cocq’s hand; the left hand of a musketeer with six fingers; as well as many other mysteries and unsolved puzzles that remain to this day.

You could start with the fact that officially the painting was called “The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch.” It became known as “The Night Watch” only in the 18th century, when varnish on its surface darkened. Even Van Hoogstraten—Rembrandt’s student—wrote that he wished Rembrandt “had put more light into it.”

The painting is full of subtext. For instance, the British film director Peter Greenaway believes that this canvas metaphorically depicts a real detective story that happened in Amsterdam during Rembrandt’s time—specifically, a commissioned assassination of Captain Pierce Hasselburgh. It’s unknown whether this is actually true, but it was after this painting, which exposed respectable Amsterdam residents, that Rembrandt’s streak of financial failures began. In the end, the artist was forced to sell his possessions and move to the outskirts of Amsterdam, where he died in complete poverty.

The French art historian Eugène Fromentin delivers the painter the following “verdict”: “The Night Watch, presenting Rembrandt in the days of strong split in his personality, is neither a creation of his thought when it was completely free, nor a creation of his hand when it was unbound by anything. There is no real Rembrandt here” (Fromentin, E. Old Masters. — Moscow: Izobrazitelnoye iskusstvo, 1996).

The story I offer you is not a detective tale. This is how the last day of the life of a great Dutch painter seemed to me. The day when he looks closely at his own life as the most grand painting he ever created. Childhood in Leiden, first successes, Saskia—his wife and love for life… The characters from his paintings come alive. He gave them life—and they made his name immortal. Light and shadow, truth and fiction, mix on the palette like paint—and only Rembrandt himself knows the truth.