Swagger and Smirk: Patrician Empowerment and Rembrandt's Nightwatch

History of Art Seminar

Scholars have traditionally interpreted the Nightwatch as a representation of “the principle of order in military exercises”. By importing allusions to the national and civic past and present, so the argument of modern scholarship goes, Rembrandt sublimates the military readiness of the officers and their guardsmen into an allegory of the prowess of Amsterdam and the power of the burghers. Recently, however, the idea that the military ethos of hierarchy, control and order are at the heart of the “Nightwatch” has begun to be questioned by art historians. In this paper, Cordula van Wyhe will propose a radically new interpretation of the “Nightwatch” by arguing that the behaviour of the militiamen is distinctly chaotic and anti-militaristic.