Selfportrait
Hendrickje
Titus
The Nightwatch
Rembrandt van Rijn 1606-1669
Rembrandt’s The Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild from 1662 shows six inspectors of the drapers’ guild, whose job it was to grade the quality of cloth samples. Although they did not enjoy a particularly high status, Rembrandt enhanced their stature by his choice of perspective: he painted them as if we, the viewers, were just entering the room to find them sitting behind a table we could barely see over. As viewers, we feel examined, as if we were a cloth sample being graded. The syndics are, in fact, pronouncing a Last Judgment – on us! A child of his time, Rembrandt thus suggests that religion underlies all our day-to-day activities.
But that is not all. Through his magic shading of light and dark, modelling of the expression of the eyes and choice of that infinitesimal moment when someone looks up, moves a hand or shifts a chair, he created the ‘patriarchal’ light that seems exclusively his. Nonetheless, all these portraits are true to life.
Text: Mark Mastenbroek