"WOMAN READS:" "Rembrandt's painting of "The Night Watch"" "has been seen by Gerard Dou," "Ferdinand Bol," "Carel Fabritius," "Leendert van Beyeren," "Jacob van Dorsten," "[Siren walls]" "Samuel van Hoogstraeten," "Abraham Furnerius," "Bernard Keil," "Christophe Paudies," "[Siren walls]" "Johan Ulrich Mayer," "Hendrik van Uylenburgh..." "[Sirens continue]" "This building is the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Holland, the home of the prime collection of Dutch painting." "... Jorisz Dirx," "Reinier Engelen..." "[Sirens continue] ... Jan Visscher," "Isaac de Jouderville," "Govaert Flinck..." "The Rijksmuseum is currently the scene of a shooting." "[Gunshot]" "The relevant authorities should investigate." "Where did the bullet go?" "I accuse you, gentlemen, of murder!" "They shot Hasselburg!" "Someone shot Hasselburg!" "[Women pray]" "A man is dead, shot through the right eye." "His name is Captain Piers Hasselburg, and he commanded the 13th Company of the Amsterdam Militia." "Who killed him?" "In what circumstances?" "Is it murder?" "And if it was, who were the killers?" "What was the motive?" "What is the evidence?" "Who are the suspects?" "[Siren stops]" "PETER GREENAWAY CONTINUES:" "There are a large number of participants in this drama... soldiers, officers, merchants, traders, painters, lovers, wives, mistresses, servants, orphans, children." "[Gunshot]" "What are their connections to the murder?" "What are their relationships to the murdered man?" "Where is it best to start our investigation?" "[Tour guide describes painting]" "GREENWAY: "The Night Watch" by Rembrandt van Rijn, painted in Amsterdam in 1642." "This painting is the key to the whole drama of a conspiracy and a murder." "It is an indictment, not an indictment as usually occurs as a text, but as an image, an accusation, a pointed finger, a j'accuse..." "Rembrandt's j'accuse." "[Gunshot]" "It has all we require to complete our investigation of a murder, with all the necessary evidence and all the well-placed clues." "It is painted by an ironic, critical, even angry and accusing Rembrandt, who is, by turns, the investigator, detective, and prosecutor." "Fashions in art change every generation." "In this year, 2008," "Rembrandt's painting of "The Night Watch" can be considered as the fourth most-celebrated painting in the Western world." "The first is undoubtedly the "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci, the second is "The Last Supper," also by Leonardo, the third is the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo, and the fourth is "The Night Watch" by Rembrandt." "All four paintings are by painters we know by their Christian names, a special honor demonstrating and confirming our confidence and familiarity with the artist." "The first three paintings are Italian and Roman Catholic, an heroic propaganda for Italy and the Roman Catholic mythology." "The fourth is by a miller's son from Leiden in the Netherlands..." "Protestant, republic, and democratic." "Like those first three paintings... the "Mona Lisa," "The Last Supper," and the Sistine Chapel ceiling..." ""The Night Watch" has been endlessly scrutinized, examined and contemplated, and considered to be full of mysteries." "WOMAN CONTINUES READING:" "... Camille Corot," "Constant Dutilleux," "Peter von Cornelius..." "As always, history and time dilutes, exaggerates, distorts, or rearranges the context of any object and event, certainly of an image, certainly of a painting, certainly of those significant benchmark paintings that have highlighted the ways" "we've been encouraged to look at the world, that have fashioned our viewpoints." "We look at the world through the eyes of our image makers, and for more than 2,000 years they have almost exclusively been painters." "Most people are visually illiterate." "Why should it be otherwise?" "We have a text-based culture." "Our educational systems teach us to value text over image, which is one of the reasons why we have such an impoverished cinema." "Just because you have eyes does not mean to say that you can see." "From childhood, when we are persuaded to learn the alphabet, through adolescence, when we are taught to amass vocabulary and refine our word skills, to adulthood, when we never finish polishing our ability to communicate through words," "proportionately in our culture very few people spend as much time and patience and intelligence reading paintings as they do reading text." "Our sophistications of communication are text-based in the spoken and the written word, and as a consequence, by comparison, the interpretation of the manufactured image in our culture is undernourished, ill-informed, and impoverished." "Is what we see really what we see?" "Or do we see only what we want to see?" "It has been said that the image always has the last word, which is a very witty thing to say in any language, but has it really been true?" "After all, the word is also an image, and indeed, we receive that statement as text and not as an image." "Most paintings..." "except for those seen in churches... were simply not seen in public until the creation of public museums in the middle of the 19th century." ""The Night Watch," unusually, has been on very public display from the moment the varnish was dry." "This painting went on display immediately." "It was on the wall in the Militia Headquarters within days of being finished." "Many, many people came to see it, talk about it, comment on it." "Its unveiling had been advertised well beforehand." "Amongst thousands and thousands of viewers for a period of over three and a half centuries, this Rembrandt painting has been looked at by the articulate and the knowledgeable and the visually trained and the visually literate." "And this body of the curious have repeatedly asked questions about it." "It is said that it contains many mysteries which have failed to be answered in a fully satisfactory way, individually or together, until, that is, we see the painting in a special way, and that special way is to look at it as an accusation," "as a j'accuse, an indictment of conspiracy, a murder." "We will consider 33 of these possible 50 "Night Watch" mysteries and demonstrate their interconnected significances." "33 mysteries plus one more, 33 plus 1, and the 34th mystery is perhaps the most significant because it sets up the reasons for all the other 33, for this painting marked both the height of Rembrandt's talent," "his audacity, his ambition, maybe of his bombast, his overreaching self-esteem, perhaps even of his very self-indulgent arrogance." "But this painting also marked, perhaps because of those characteristics, his David challenge to the contemporary Goliath, the start of his fall from popularity, prosperity, and contemporary fame into penury, insolvency, and disregard." "What is the painting all about?" "What is the nature of the presentation of this image?" "What, indeed, is the content of this painting, called by us but not by Rembrandt or his contemporaries" ""The Night Watch."" "The precedent is a long tradition, maybe over 100 years long, going back to at least the 1530s, and it is the particularly Dutch genre of the group military portrait." "The Dutch provinces, seeking their independence from the Hapsburg Empire, were involved in a long, drawn-out guerrilla warfare with their Spanish masters in Madrid." "Many Dutch townships had a local militia recruited from local townspeople, self-taught and self-trained, who rallied when necessary to protect themselves, their people, their property, and their city from the enemy." "These various local companies organized often according to their chosen weapon of defense and attack... crossbow or pike... and from the late 16th century onwards from a series of new firearms, artillery pieces developed by energetic new military technologies" "springing up all over Europe." "These militia companies had strong local ties and identities, and they liked to have themselves painted, often in uniform in a state of readiness or at the very least in a strong-image situation that inspired solidarity and confidence." "REMBRANDT:" "Rotten burghers!" "Gawking and smiling, pouncing and posing..." "I can do better than that!" "EGREMONT:" "There's Benjamin." "He had a most desirable wife, dimples and curls everywhere." "He couldn't sit still." "When I painted him, he had a bladder complaint." "We had to keep the chamber pot by his chair." "As the Civil War conditions grew more relaxed, so did the soldiery, but it was still very prestigious to be considered a member of a militia, and the other interests of these part-time company soldiers... trade, finance, banking, land ownership," "local politics, national politics, international politics, even the arts... began to dominate." "The Militia companies became more and more gentlemers clubs." "Each company was traditionally led by five officers... a captain, a lieutenant, a standard-bearer, and at least one, if not two sergeants." "The Militia paintings were either painted by the local artist or by the celebrated and accomplished Masters, over the years developed a format of rows of identifiable portraits, all full-frontal, faces to the viewer, exhibiting their wealth and status." "I want to draw everyone beforehand." "That's essential." "And I'm not doing long rows of pompous faces." "But anyway, I have other things to do first." "And I want nine months, human gestation period." "If it takes that long to make a baby, it will certainly take that long to make a painted army." "Rembrandt, commissioned by the Amsterdam Militia of the early 1640s, chose to break with that tradition." "Given that the genre is the military group portrait, what is Rembrandt's version of this genre all about?" "Is it a record of historical fact?" "Is it what is called a history painting?" "Is it a documentary truth?" "Is it a fictional reconstruction?" "Is it a photographic still?" "Is it an actuality, a tableau vivant?" "A frozen film frame?" ""The Night Watch" could seek an explanation through all these possibilities, but most importantly it has to be seen as a painted piece of theater." "O, desperate thee, I will bestow on thee the reward of thy treachery." "The wanton!" "Blacker than the vilest pit of hell!" "Think'st thou self an innocent?" "Think'st thou self chaste?" "I had rather prove thee what I know thou art... a whore!" "[Screams]" "[Audience gasps]" "Witness thus the reward of dishonor." "[Applause]" "GREENAWAY:" "It is a theatrical exposition, a reconstructed theatrical drama into which Rembrandt has scrupulously painted an indictment of guilt in paint." "JACOB DE RO Y:" "Your painting, Rembrandt, is a pretense, a fakery, a cheat, a dishonesty, full of impossible contradictions unwon'thy of a truly intelligent man." "Apart from all the other infelicities that demonstrate you did not fulfill the task asked of you, your painting, Rembrandt, is dishonest, so much so that this is not a painting at all." "By its very nature it denies being a painting." "It is a work of the theater!" "GREENAWAY:" "And if it is a carefully choreographed representation of a piece of stage theater, we should view it as such." "It has a theatrical cast of 34 characters... 16 officers, 16 men, 2 women, and a dog." "All the characters are self-consciously costumed, as is characteristic of a theater play." "JACOB DE RO Y:" "You have made a frozen moment of theater." "You have stopped a costume play in action." "They wanted the costume." "We know that." "But you encouraged them." "And there was to be certain that we all knew that we were at the theater, and at the theater, all things are possible, even dying of love." "And all the characters are self-consciously composed and choreographed as in a frozen moment of a theater play." "DE RO Y:" "But you have pretended that the people in your painting are not being watched, which is the definition of an actor." "An actor is a person who has been trained to pretend he is not being watched." "So... all the people in your paintings are all actors, not real people at all." "GREENAWAY:" "And they are lit as in a transitory moment of a theater play, arranged on a shallow stage with all the characters facing front, keyed into that outstretched hand in the center of the picture, inviting us, the audience in the auditorium," "to enter into a theatrical drama." "All the world's a stage, eh, Rembrandt?" "You're going to put us all on a stage in your painting?" "GREENAWAY:" "Why the triumphal arch?" "It is not a usual feature at all in Dutch Militia paintings." "Although we might agree that the Rembrandt "Night Watch" stage is a deliberately designed artificial space, no scenic design is without geographical reference in the world." "Rembrandt is painting this painting primarily for an Amsterdam audience." "They would be looking for that reference, perhaps universally and maybe locally... universally, in that image of the triumphal arch employed frequently enough in heroic Italian painting." "The heroic arch is a foreign idea, a Roman idea, an Italian idea." "So to celebrate the idea of victory, a victorious company, build a victory arch." "How about triumphal arches locally?" "In Amsterdam?" "Amsterdam was a city of wood and brick with few buildings higher than four stories." "Here we have a stone building, at the very least an imitation stone building." "It's easier to build arches in stone rather than in brick." "There is a strong local precedent, and none sharper and brighter in the Amsterdam memory than a very recent triumphal visit four years before in 1638, a very memorable event when Amsterdam was full of triumphal ceremonial arches," "flags, flying bunting, and companies of marching Amsterdam Militia." "The victory arches were erected for the occasion and therefore were temporary constructions, designed and built of wood and painted to imitate stone." "Is Rembrandt making a special point here that Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Militia are involved in a piece of municipal fakery?" "I insist you wear these." "I'm paying, for God's sake!" "This... wrong color, too dull, and no shine." "If they're good enough for the Queen of France, they're good enough for me and should be good enough for you." "GREENAWAY:" "And the event for this fakery and the imitation stone victory arch is the visit of Marie de Medici to Amsterdam." "The name Medici is surely related to ideas of money." "The Medici were the great banking family of the old city of Florence, a name certainly resonant in the new city of money..." "Amsterdam, the Florence of the North." "Marie de Medici had been married to the King of France, Henry IV." "After 10 years of a troubled regency, her son, Louis Xlll, ruled in his own right, and she was ousted." "As the former, exiled Regent of France, she traveled around Europe looking for money and sustenance, and she came on a right royal visit to the new city of money, Amsterdam, a tumultuous visit full of a little republic being honored" "by a Queen Mother of France." "It meant status, honor, and kudos, especially to her local accompanying guard of honor, who were, of course, after much jealous jockeying for this particular position of honor, the Second Precinct Kloveniers Company of the Amsterdam Musketeers." "And they were led by Captain Piers Hasselburg and his lieutenant, Piers Egremont," "French champions settled in Holland from persecuted Protestant Huguenot French stock two generations before." "Egremont was a gracious womanizer." "Handsome... you can see that." "Perhaps over-gallant." "He worked hard at it, but he never took, as far as I can see, what he was not offered." "It is true he certainly was loved by the ladies, above and below stairs." "[Chuckles]" "Which brings us to the deceased, Hasselburg." "What was your relationship to the deceased?" "I met him in the van Baerle Fields on the day we witnessed the Militia Company at target practice, the day Rembrandt was hit in the face by an exploding musket." "[Gunshot]" "[Crowd gasps]" "SASKIA:" "Rembrandt!" "[Murmuring]" "And the last time I saw him, if you don't count his corpse at his funeral, was in our house when Rembrandt was thinking of painting a nativity with Titus as Christ child." "Lieutenant Egremont was accused by Jongkind and Clement and Floris Banning Cocq... all reputable officers... of being the central figure associated with the murder of Captain Hasselburg." "Do we believe the word of your husband against theirs?" "You know that I believe my husband." " No doubts?" " Absolutely not." "No doubts." "GREENAWAY:" "A very pleased Marie de Medici suggested that the Kloveniers Company of Amsterdam Musketeers, led so amicably by soldiers of French stock, ought to have themselves painted by a great French-speaking... in fact, multilingual-speaking... painter," "Peter Paul Rubens, no less, who had flattered her in a most exorbitant, extraordinary way, in fact, in a frieze of mighty, heroic paintings that distinguished her as a classical heroine in a grand, monarchial drama without end," "certainly with excessive amounts of nudity, allegory, and theatrical drama." "On her behalf, Captain Hasselburg and his entire company received gifts and accumulating honor and status and could only wish that such memorable events could be repeated again." "Rubens, the most courtly Roman Catholic painter, was politically not at all suitable." "The mystery of why, when, and how "The Night Watch" is as it is can be put down to Marie de Medici's championship of Rubens." "What Roman Catholic Flemish Rubens could do heroically for France" "Protestant Dutch Rembrandt might well do heroically for Holland." "GREENAWAY:" "Then the much-desired prospect of a new event to honor another ex-Medici heroine turned up." "There was to be a new royal visit to Amsterdam with possibly even greater prize." "This Princess, too, was a Medici on her mother's side." "A visit of the Princess Mary Stuart, daughter of the incumbent British King Charles I, who was having serious trouble with his parliament about money and privilege and religion." "The Princess Mary Stuart was very young and was the wife in an as yet unconsummated marriage to the heir of the Dutch House of Orange, Prince William." "When monarchies are in trouble, they send their females begging." "GREENAWAY:" "The English mission, no less, was to pawn the English crown jewels to further the monarchial interest of Charles I in securing his kingdom against his parliament in what looked like a coming civil war in England." "The King of England's pawnshop deal." "Crown jewels going back to Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror!" "We are all in on this deal." "Well, most of us are in on this deal." "The captain and the lieutenant aren't." "GREENAWAY:" "Access to the English crown jewels was a superlative opportunity, at the very least, to secure potential pawn brokers and negotiators an enormous rate of financial interest." "And since most were certain, in the optimistic little Dutch Republic who thought all Europe should be republican, that King Charles I of England would lose against his parliament, then those very, very valuable English assets would be forfeited to the Dutch," "most particularly to the moneylenders of Amsterdam." "Opportunity for some skullduggery was rampant." "If the Amsterdam Musketeer Company could gain access to the new English visitors and be their close-guarding company of honor, situating them in a most ambitious negotiating position, the prospect of riches and privilege was exceedingly likely." "How would it have been if you would have been obliged to paint the portrait of a one-eyed captain of the Militia lying on his back in a coffin, dressed like a grandmother in bed?" "GREENAWAY:" "The honest, Frenchified Dutch" "Captain Hasselburg had to go." "FRANS BANNING COCQ:" "Sadness to meet on such an occasion." "GREENAWAY:" "And the Anglophile Dutch military captain, Banning Cocq, and his lieutenant, Willem van Ruytenburch, should take over the reigns of the Amsterdam Musketeer Militia Company." "And this is exactly what happened." "[Church bell tolling]" "Initially the plan was to create an adjustment in the command by moving captain Hasselburg and lieutenant Egremont to new military positions in Utrecht." "But the impatience of the conspirators and the need for speedy action laid them open to the encouragement of the two Banning Cocq relatives," "Floris and Clement..." "I have never met a painter before." "GREENAWAY:" "For a swifter and more violent action... assassination disguised as a military accident." "[Gunshot]" "Why is this painting called "The Night Watch"?" "Is this, in fact, a nighttime scene?" "[Church bells ring, wind howls]" "GREENAWAY CONTINUES:" "The title "The Night Watch"" "was given to the painting around 1715 when a municipal police force was instituted in Amsterdam to protect the citizens against nocturnal criminal activity." "The members of this force were called the "night watch,"" "and they prowled the nighttime streets with weapons and torches." "The general darkness of the painting, which had been commented on as soon as the painting went on display, lit by exaggerated pools of what were considered to be artificial light, coupled by the aging and gradual darkening of the painting," "identified it with the activities of this new Amsterdam police force and gave rise to the familiar title." "There is no reason to consider, in fact, that this is a nighttime painting, though Rembrandt, without pursuing entirely new areas of painterly investigation, may have deliberately given the painting a sinister air in keeping with his purposes" "to create a drama of intrigue, conspiracy and murder." "And hereby lies so much of the painting's fascination and power and novelty." "Some made remarks about how dark the painting was." "But that in itself was a comment on the theatrical lighting they had so recently witnessed on the stage." "[Gunshot]" "GREENAWAY:" "Rembrandt's reputation as a master of light, lighting effects, and chiaroscuro is deservedly well known." "He is the chronological fourth in a line of great European painters, who, as masters of the 17th-century High Baroque, investigated artificial light..." "Caravaggio," "Rubens," "Rembrandt, and Velasquez." "One could make out a case that cinema began with these four painters." "These are the first painters who are seriously and consistently interested in the painting of artificial light." "And this is partly to do with two, not inventions exactly, but massive improvements in traditional technologies... the vast improvement in the technology of the candle" "and the vast improvement in the production of the mirror." ""The candle and the mirror" could be a poetic description of cinema... out of darkness into the light." "Up until the 1550s by far most of the world went to bed at sunset and got up at dawn." "Artificial light was expensive." "Only the aristocracy and the church could afford it." "Think of how many bees it takes to make a wax candle." "Then around the end of the sixteenth century they reinvented the tallow candle in Northern Europe, and the start of the 24-hour light was on its long journey to now, when the artificial suns never set around the globe." "Daylight, and therefore, curiously, time itself, expanded." "The new artificial light could be afforded by the bourgeoisie, even the richer proletariat." "The refined tallow candles were smoky, smelly, did not last very long, the wicks constantly needed trimming, but the passage from the supper table to the bed, because there probably wasrt a place called a bedroom," "could be essayed without any more stubbing your toe in the dark." "You could see one another when you undressed." "You could see the shadows and the glooms." "You could - in fact - create them, engineering the highlights and the half-lights, and painters did just that." "A whole new visible world opened up, and painters of talent and repute exploited that world to the full." "And this is exactly what Rembrandt does in "The Night Watch"... multiple light sources, the possibility of more than one sun in the sky, manipulating the shadows and reflections, the light bounce and the highlights." "If you trace back light sources, you're going to be disappointed if you want solar logic." "But that is a painter's license, and we give it to them freely if we want drama and excitement and fantasy and magic." "It's so goddamn dark, you can't see anything anyway!" "Bring him some candles!" "[Laughter]" "MILITIA MEMBER:" "You're trying to be Italian on us, are you, Rembrandt?" "A great deal of this painterly magic was Italian." "All self-respecting Dutch painters sooner or later went to Italy to look, study, and learn, and also to acquire a necessary aura of painterly authentication." "And if you haven't been to Italy what the fuck do you know about Italian paintings anyway?" "!" "Rembrandt certainly respected, copied, admired, and emulated the painters of Italy, but he never went there." "In reply to the taunts of being a provincial stay-at-home, he replied," ""Why should I go to Italy, if Italy can come to me?"" "Which has, in the computer-information age, a very modern ring." "But whereas our accessibility is available at the push of a computer button, his was possible via the print trade." "And the print trade in Italian masters was blooming, making Italian painting familiar all over Northern Europe in the print markets of Antwerp, Utrecht, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam." ""The Night Watch" is a history painting in the grand Italian tradition." "Why?" "Well, certainly to attain for it a credence, a regard for status in the Grand Manner, but not necessarily to admire that tradition, but to mock it." "Are you being satirical, Van Rijn?" "Is this a satire?" "GREENAWAY:" "Here is his "Abduction of Persephone,"" "surely an image of some satirical intention, and his "Abduction of Europa,"" "where the event is deliberately trivialized in the presence of silly women who can only scream." "Here is his "Diana and Actaeon"" "combined with "The Discovery of Callisto's Pregnancy."" "He is mocking the whole rather silly sexual drama of the original stories... women seen naked by a trespassing male revengefully turn him into a stag who is pulled down by his dogs, woman discovered to be adulterously pregnant," "by virgins in the service of Diana." "These are two classical stories of dubious legitimized voyeurism, the nature of their dubious legitimization mocked by Rembrandt by numerous wry observations." "And here is the boy Ganymede abducted by Jupiter disguised as an eagle to become a catamite on Mount Olympus." "Drawing much excessive attention to buttocks and penis, but then satirizing the sexual desire with the very young age, the bawling, screwed-up ugly face, the dribbling urine, and the whole general indignity." "Desire flies away, and those who have such desires are mocked." "Satire and mockery in the Rembrandt armory is not new, and he uses them again in "The Night Watch."" "There is another and further Italian point to be made." "Italy in the 16th and 17th century is the land of sudden treachery, vicious assassination, profound betrayals, spiteful revenge, and political violence." "I accuse you, gentlemen, of murder!" "GREENAWAY:" "North European playwrights, like Shakespeare and Webster, set their dramas of treachery and revenge in Verona, Venice, Florence, Malfi, and Rome." "Rembrandt, satirically pastiching the Italian style and manner of picture-making in his endeavor to demonstrate treachery and conspiracy and murder in Holland, is suggesting that Amsterdam has adopted the Italian politics of sudden assassination." "And a Republic tempered by assassination is not the Dutch way." "We do not assassinate like this, like Italians, like Romans..." "Or do we?" "Will we?" "And if Holland has not already accomplished that, as he believes, with the murder of Hasselburg, will it become a Dutch habit?" "Might we suggest that Rembrandt was being prophetic and making an apocryphal reference to the savage assassinations of the brothers De Witt in the Hague in 1672 and even perhaps the murder of Pim Fortuyn in 2002 in the Mediapark in Hilversum," "and much closer to home... the assassination of Theo van Gogh in 2004 in the streets of Amsterdam?" "Rembrandt may have received the commission in late 1640 in association with Captain Hasselburg and his lieutenant, Egremont, brokered, most certainly, by Rembrandt's dealer," "Hendrik Uylenburgh." "U YLENBURGH:" "If I benefit... and it's for me to say how, we need to find out... you could benefit, too." "Push up your price!" "Inclusive or exclusive of your fee?" "Oh, well, obviously I don't expect extras from you." "Those days are over, I think, I feel, I know, I'm sure..." "GREENAWAY:" "Then the situation of the commission completely changed when Hasselburg was murdered and his lieutenant, Egremont, went into hiding, accused of being responsible for his death by permitting a military accident to occur due to his irresponsibility." "The new commissioners, lead by the Banning Cocq family, were keen to create a seamless continuity to help conceal their conspiracy, and after some show of hesitation, they renewed their contract with Rembrandt." "The standard-bearer Visscher was certainly in on the plot, as were Kemp and Engelen and De Roy, and, in various degrees of knowingness and complicity, all the other officers and most of the inner circle of men," "certainly backed by the Banning Cocq family, whose family connections in Amsterdam were very strong, dominated by Banning Cocq's mother and aided and abetted by the De Graeffs, whose head was Andries de Graeff, probably the wealthiest man in Amsterdam in the 1640s," "and certainly Banning Cocq's brother-in-law." "GREENAWAY:" "We want to ask you of your relationship to the seven major personalities accused..." "Captain Frans Banning Cocq, Lord of Purmerland," "Lieutenant Ruytenburch, Lord of Vlaardingen," "Sergeant Rombout Kemp," "Sergeant Engelen," "Standard-bearer Visscher," "Firing-master Martin Geyle, and Ensign Horatio Eiken." "My husband was certain that everyone in the painting stands accused." "GREENAWAY:" "We will keep the accusations presently to those named, if we may." "Captain Frans Banning Cocq." "Through my cousin, Hendrik van Uylenburgh," "I met Banning Cocq's servant Jochem, who paid me 50 guilders... half the fee for Banning Cocq's full-length portrait in the Militia painting." "I've spoken the slightest pleasantries with him on only three occasions when he came to our house in the Breestraat for portrait sittings." "Banning Cocq, Lord of Purmerland, was not a lord in his own right or through his own ineritance, but was a lord by marriage." "His father-in-law, with no male issue, had been the first bearer of the title, and the family fortune of Banning Cocq's new wife had been made in trade and merchandising, mainly with the Middle East and spices." "Banning Cocq is the man in black." "Why is he dressed in black?" "Red sash, I think, and the black suit." "That's it." "Good." "And we'll have a gesture." "A gesture like a Roman officer." "Not Greek." "Mm-hmm." "That's it." "Mm-hmm." "There." "There." "And the... that's it." "Flat-soled shoes." " This, I think." " Oh." "REMBRANDT:" "And the man in black." "[Rembrandt claps]" "GREENAWAY:" "Satan, complete with black satanic costume, black hat, black jerking, black breeches, black hose and black shoes, with a demoniac red-crimson sash, with even a suggestion of a demon dragors encrusted tail between his legs." "Lieutenant van Ruytenburch," "Lord of Vlaardingen." "I met little Willem sorry, Lieutenant Ruytenburch, twice... once when I was introduced to him in the old church on the occasion of Hasselburg's funeral, and again when he arrived to take a portrait sitting with Rembrandt in the big studio." "He drank a large amount of Tokay, I remember, and sat on his hat." "He smelled of scent, orange water, which I had always believed was the scent affected by an advertised womanizer." "GREENAWAY:" "Willem van Ruytenburch is bright and shiny." "Why?" "He, too, held a title relative to good financing created by his father." "REMBRANDT:" "Bad-boy son of a rich man who got his money from spices then bought a title, gave it to his son to squander in bloody squalor!" "Mister Lord Vlaardingen, the bought-title man, how much is that... 30,000 guilders from the good burghers of Rotterdam 'cause they needed a new fucking roof for the town hall?" "!" "WILLEM VAN RU YTENBURCH:" "Shut your bloody mouth, Rijn!" "REMBRANDT:" "Oh!" "GREENAWAY:" "Rembrandt has painted him as a rich boy, an exhibitionist parvenu." "Was this deserved?" "Was there ulterior motive in making such a spectacle out of him?" "Van Ruytenburch was arrogant, a new man, his father's money had made him and spoiled him." "It sounds as though you, too, disliked him." "I have to confess, I did, but my feelings in the matter must surely be irrelevant." "Here is a great curiosity." "The painting is dominated by the two figures of Banning Cocq and Ruytenburch, friends, companions in arms, captain and lieutenant, both titled." "These two men are not so very far from being equals in military command." "They were certainly not so very far from being equals in Amsterdam social life." "Banning Cocq is painted tall enough." "As the English say, the Dutch getting taller all the time." "That seems not to be the case, though, with little Willem, do you think?" "BANNING COCQ:" "Little?" "Little?" "Do you think Willem is little?" "GREENAWAY:" "But Willem van Ruytenburch is shorter, considerably shorter, so much shorter, in fact, that Willem does not even come up to Banning Cocq's shoulder." "Both men are standing on the same level piece of ground, equally spaced from the viewer." "REMBRANDT:" "Legitimate painter's armory... flatter, praise, insult, abuse, accuse..." "Accuse?" "Are you going to do the same?" "GREENAWAY:" "Now, the painter's art is one of legitimate license and accommodation." "One could say that in the art of painting portraits a great many portrait painters would engage in, at the very least, a little flattery, arrange things on a canvas a little more accommodatingly than is possible in real life." "But apparently not Rembrandt." "Even if Willem van Ruytenburch was, indeed, as they say, vertically disadvantaged, few people would be in a position to know, few would be able to compare man and painting." "So who would know if Rembrandt were to paint a short man with a little more stature?" "Rembrandt has decidedly chosen not to do this." "He has chosen to record Willem van Ruytenburch as shorter than his captain." "Much shorter, in fact." "Indeed, we might say he has chosen to make Willem, indeed, a "shortie."" "REMBRANDT:" "Vlaardingen?" "!" "Fucking hell, Vlaardingen!" "Vlaardingen, where is Vlaardingen?" "Hendrickje, do you know?" "Vlaardingen?" "!" "Who are you?" "Where are you?" "Wherefore art thou, fucking Vlaardingen!" "GREENAWAY:" "The whole painting, in a significant way, is centered around the single gesture of Banning Cocq offering his hand to us, his audience." "Are the implications greater than signifying a desire for his company to move forward?" "That's not Banning Cocq's hand, is it?" "It looks like it doesn't belong to the arm." "Is that an observation or a criticism?" "But you're right." "It's not his hand." "That belongs to Piers Hasselburg." "GREENAWAY:" "Although much art-historian scholarship has been made of that hand... scholarship that has been mocked by the commentator who suggested, indeed, that Banning Cocq is simply holding out his hand to see if it was raining... there is something a little unconvincing about it," "its draftsmanship, the way it issues without absolute conviction from the black suit." "Is it indeed because it is not Banning Cocq's hand at all but Hasselburg's, a preparatory leftover from the significance of the first occupier of that position?" "Is Rembrandt trying to remind us of something?" "It is, after all, a left hand that makes the gesture, the sinister hand..." "from the Latin "sinister" for "left."" "Only a dead man offers his left hand for a handshake." "GREENAWAY:" "Here is another complicated observation." "Whilst Banning Cocq offers his left hand to us, the audience, and has a gloved right hand, the glove he carries so gingerly in his right gloved hand as though it might be something very unpleasant is not a left-handed glove," "as you should imagine to think it ought to be, but a right-handed glove." "There is an explanation that offers a whole new slant on the painting of "The Night Watch" and its significance." "Five years earlier, in 1637, Rembrandt had, on commission, painted a full-length portrait of Andries de Graeff, foremost citizen of Amsterdam and very wealthy." "Where is my brother-in-law, Andries de Graeff?" "Do you remember that business with the returned painting?" "That wasrt very good, was it, Rembrandt?" "I understood he, ehm..." "I understood he threw the glove at you, so to speak." "A challenge, so to speak." "Well, he tends to be touchy and tetchy, I suppose." "It's not too late for you to change your mind." "And I would hate to have to sue you for non-payment, like your brother-in-law, who, you must know, lost his case." "GREENAWAY:" "Andries de Graeff had apparently refused to accept and pay for the painting." "There is a tradition that it was Andries de Graeff's wife who made him refuse it since it seemed to depict Andries as red-cheeked, unsteady, and drunk with unfocused eyes." "And people in the know identified the heavily nail-studded door and the stone portrait of a Roman as the location for a well-known hostelry frequented by men of business who enjoyed a drink and sometimes other favors supplied there." "Had Rembrandt been a little ironic, if not a little cynical?" "Rembrandt had duly been paid, and he returned the painting to Andries de Graeff and had added something as a literal footnote thrown down at Andries's feet, nothing less than a right-handed challenge glove." "Banning Cocq, it seems, had been forced, on Andries de Graeff's insistence, to pick up that challenge glove and follow through what that picking-up gesture had meant... he, Banning Cocq, now had to fight Rembrandt in something like personal combat." "It was all for the sake of family honor, because Andries de Graeff and Banning Cocq were brothers-in-law." "A visitor to the Rijksmuseum, apparently understanding something of Rembrandt's meaning in "The Night Watch" painting and disturbed and incensed by its implications, took a kitchen knife from his raincoat pocket and heavily scored "The Night Watch" canvas." "He recognized Captain Banning Cocq to be Satan in the act of luring Christ into the underworld." "The activity relates to an event recorded in The Golden Legend, the medieval book of biblical apocrypha, an event known as The Harrowing of Hell." "Between Christ's crucifixion and His descent from the cross, both events which Rembrandt painted... taking advantage of Christ's death and Christ's denial of His Father..." ""Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me?"..." "Satan took Christ down into Hell in the hope of keeping him there in subjugation, a revenge on God, His Father." "Banning Cocq as Satan, the man in black, is dressed as a civilian, though he is really only a citizen in disguise, hiding his iron military gorget beneath his lace collar, no spurs, no breastplate," "whilst Willem as Christ is undisguisably a soldier, the soldier who was the risen Christ, resplendent in white and yellow and cream." "And if these accusations are not sufficient, consider that Banning Cocq, offering his hand to you, his audience, and he also, with the same left hand, is about to lead Christ to Hell." "And the fingers of that left hand have no fingernails." "Is that not a sure and certain sign of Banning Cocq's demoniac nature?" "GREENAWAY:" "Willem van Ruytenburch," "Lord of Vlaardingen, carries a weapon." "It is technically called a "partisan,"" "essentially a spear used for thrusting and jabbing and, in dire need, throwing, though the weapon looks heavy, and once thrown... and one imagines not thrown very far... not easily recoverable in the chaos of battle." "We cannot but notice how it is positioned, aligned, indeed, exactly with Willem's genitals." "The weapors design suggests an erect phallus, and with its side pieces, it also intimates testicles." "Maybe even the tassels imply pubic hair." "Once viewed in this fashion and with this interpretation, it is difficult to see the item otherwise." "Rembrandt, eminently accomplished, perfectly talented to paint this item exactly how and where he wanted to... higher, lower, to the left, or to the right, and still perfectly fulfill notions of illusionistic reality... chose to paint it exactly where he has," "and done so, surely, significantly, to make a point of Willem's excessive phallic exhibitionism, a painted demonstration of his womanizing." "[Woman screaming]" "WILLEM:" "Oh, what have we got over here?" "Oh, now." "No, no, no, no, no, listen..." "GREENAWAY:" "It is interesting that this weapon, the partisan, was no longer used in conflict on the battlefield, but was, by 1642, merely ceremonial." "It was an antique, a vestige of its former purpose." "Is Rembrandt implying that Willem van Ruytenburch, with his bought-title lordship and his diminutive stature and his fancy exhibitionist uniform, the possessor of an over-sized, aggressive phallic apparatus of no longer purposeful significance?" "X-rays of the picture demonstrate that Rembrandt had three attempts at painting this partisan, forever making it longer and longer, suggesting a need to make a stronger and yet stronger satirical point." "GREENAWAY:" "If we take a look at the shadow of Banning Cocq's left hand, his ungloved naked left hand, his "sinister" hand, which is cast on the body of his lieutenant, we can readily see that it falls on his lower belly, above his genitals." "If the hand does not indicate its own purpose and desire, may not its shadow, its surrogate, do so?" "Is this a comment by Rembrandt of Banning Cocq's homosexual desire for his companion?" "And indeed, is the significance of the size, shape, and position of Van Ruytenburch's partisan a painted demonstration of Van Ruytenburch's return anatomical response to Banning Cocq's desire?" "With either reading," "Rembrandt's desire to denigrate the pair cannot go unnoticed." "REMBRANDT:" "Led there by your bold captain, who always wanted to fumble your balls, suck your cock, and finger your arse!" "GREENAWAY:" "Little Willem van Ruytenburch has the emblem of Amsterdam embroidered on his coat." "The emblem of Amsterdam for several centuries, and certainly in Rembrandt's time, was the Badge of the Three Crosses." "There are several explanations, most notewon'thy amongst them is to describe the crosses as the three crosses of St. Anthony, the saint who received beseeching prayers to protect the city from flood, fire, and fleas." "To wish to be protected from flood in a country that was for a large part below sea level is self-evident." "To be protected from fire makes sense when Amsterdam is constructed mainly of wood." "And to be protected from fleas is sensible because, though they might not know it at the time, the flea on the shipborne black rat from the Middle East or in Africa regularly brought the plague to the very busy seaport of Amsterdam" "every five or so years on a regular basis." "It is believed that Rembrandt's third consort, Hendrickje Stoffels, died of the plague in 1663, and his single surviving son Titus succumbed to the same disease in 1668." "But there are other explanations to those three Amsterdam crosses." "The Dutch Roman Catholics took them to be the three denials of the apostle Peter when he denied Christ three times on the night of the Last Supper." "The Dutch Calvinist Protestants were the target of this insult." "In a curious reverse paradox, in denying St Peter, who, by inference, was the first anointed Pope and, thus, every Pope ever since, the Dutch Calvinists of Amsterdam denied Catholicism and thus opened themselves up to misfortune." "Willem van Ruytenburch was Catholic." "Is it not strange that, supposedly, as an Amsterdam patriot, he sports what to him is conceived of as an anti-Amsterdam emblem?" "Rembrandt could be implying that Ruytenburch in fact was not the Amsterdam patriot he liked to be taken for." "He might even be taken for a fifth columnist." "FRANS BANNING COCQ:" "Company, all forward!" "Lead out the men!" "GREENAWAY:" "Much has been made of Rembrandt's ability in the medium of the visual to suggest the medium of sound." "In a commissioned painting" "Rembrandt completed two years before "The Night Watch"" "of a double portrait of the Mennonite preacher Cornelis Anslo and his wife, he drew especial attention to the celebrated powers of the preacher to excite and move his listeners by preaching, making manifest the spoken word, moving his audience by his oratory." "This ability and its relevant celebrated reputation is advertised in this painting to draw our attention to what we can supposedly hear." "REMBRANDT:" "Paintings are normally silent, but, however, we can give this painting, this picture, this image sound." "[Men murmur]" "[Military music, men talking, dogs barking]" "[Cacophony becomes louder]" "There is, of course, another sound." "[Silence]" "GREENAWAY:" "There is a purpose in all this, relevant to his depiction of conspiracy and murder." "Rembrandt is encouraging us to listen." "Fire!" "[Gunshot]" "[Men exclaim]" "GREENAWAY:" "And when we listen, we can at once understand why we've been asked to, for the painting's loudest, most dominant sound is a gunshot." "A musket shot." "[Gunshot]" "GREENAWAY:" "There is much to suggest that Rembrandt was satirizing the military pretensions of his would-be burgher soldiers." "Apparently I'm not supposed to show the enemy how to load and fire the new musket, so I'm painting the muskets upside down." "No!" "For three of his musketeers," "Rembrandt took as a model, three prints published in an illustrated military gazette called "The Exercise of Arms,"" "reckoned to be one of the most famous books of the whole seventeenth century, a handbook of weapons and artillery that had been around since 1607, though the original drawings had been completed in 1597 and the book's publication delayed due to fears of national security" "lest the enemy learn too many Dutch military secrets." "Thus, the quoted illustrations would be very well-known, especially to aspiring soldiers of the Amsterdam burgher-militia companies." "Quoting such a source, Rembrandt would be making several points to "The Night Watch" Banning Cocqs and their comrades." "He would be telling them that his research into their business was serious and reminding them of the illustrious past of the Amsterdam Militia and commentating on their ability to live up to such standards." "How about this third man, the man who pulls the trigger that fires the musket that kills Hasselburg, the shooter... the man whose face and, therefore, identity is concealed?" "REMBRANDT:" "And fire!" "So, you see, you see that without a musket stand the aimer is in full control of the trajectory of the bullet." "So, in order for this to work, the aimer, let's say Geyle or Jongkind has to be in close association with the lieutenant who shouts the orders to fire." "[Gunshot]" "Someone shot Hasselburg!" "In the eye!" "They shot him through the right eye into his brain!" "He's dead!" "Who is this soldier with the concealed face we're not supposed to see?" "By his stature, he is young, an adolescent, well-dressed, well turned out, a novice with ambitions to become a perfect soldier, a perfect musketeer." "GREENAWAY:" "And Ensign Horatio Eiken." "If I had heard about him, I never remembered who he was, apart from the figure in the painting, the adolescent with the smart uniform, brass helmet and oak leaves attached, no face, and therefore impossible to know who he was" "by seeing his visual identity..." "[Coughs] ...which was Rembrandt's whole point." "So many portrait faces in that painting that not to paint a portrait face was a comment in itself, something we are immediately drawn to." "GREENAWAY:" "His proximity in the painting to the other two young people suggests he might identify with them." "Fired by a 12-year-old boy, too young to be a soldier." "HENDRICKJE:" "Well, it could be Horatio Eiken." "He's from the orphanage." "He was out that afternoon shooting, the afternoon it was pouring with rain?" "And Marita said he came back wringing wet and shivering and wouldn't talk." "Then Dirk came in later and told everyone that Hasselburg was dead, and Horatio told him to shut up and then locked himself in the privy!" "SASKIA VAN RIJN:" "The boy was an innocent drawn into the affair, the dupe who pulled the trigger, the innocent, ignorant trigger puller, hardly to be blamed, even by the most persistent and the most cynical." "We cannot blame Horatio." "He was planted." "The plotters know who he is, and now I can show so do we." "We can include him in the picture, not by using his face, but by using his name." "Horatio Eiken!" "Oak..." "Oak leaves." "GREENAWAY:" "What of Jongkind, the so-called aimer, placed as a co-conspirator by Rembrandt in the middle of the major conspirators," "Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, the three of them making a guilty triangle?" "What is that gesture of the gloved hand... the only gesture that recognizes that anyone, in fact, in the whole painting ever heard or observed or considered that fearful musket shot with the flaming powder bursting forth from the barrel?" "Surely, it is a hand action that is, or has just, a half a second ago been aiming the direction of the barrel of that musket." "REMBRANDT:" "Fire!" "Clear!" "You've forgotten the order to aim." "Who's doing the aiming?" "REMBRANDT:" "Well, surely the shooter aims his own musket, no?" "FABRITIUS:" "You would've thought so." "MILITIA MEMBER:" "Not without a musket stand." "GREENAWAY:" "So, what have we been describing?" "The two major conspirators, Banning Cocq and Van Ruytenburch, have set up a situation for a supposed military accident where Jongkind, in the absence of the lieutenant, Egremont, who would be responsible for giving any firing orders," "tips the barrel of the musket fired by the blackmailed novice," "Horatio Eiken, to kill Captain Hasselburg with a bullet through the right eye." "GREENAWAY:" "There are two women in this painting." "What are they doing there in a crowd of 32 men and a dog?" "The first female is visually unavoidable, brightly illuminated, dressed in a glowing yellow dress, her head caught in a direct light, her dark pupils contrasting with the pale white and pink of her face." "Far less clearly, in fact, so much far less clearly, the very ambiguity might seem to draw attention to itself, is a companion." "She can certainly be made out if you look closely." "There is a right ear, blonde hair, and a blue dress, enough painted evidence to presume we are looking at a female." "This might not be such a strange observation considering some have thought that the girl in the yellow dress is, in fact, a male dwarf." "Some have certainly doubted this creature to be female at all, finding her, indeed, first ugly and then old." "How old is open to question." "MARIEKE:" "Now, I am nine now." "Well nine going on ten." "Perhaps eleven." "I could be twelve, maybe even older." "Horatio says that's what excites them." "Am I a woman or am I still a girl?" "What do you think?" "GREENAWAY:" "Some observers have suggested that Rembrandt painted a transvestite dwarf in a complex allusion to the Spanish paintings of dwarves in the Royal Hapsburg household of Philip IV as painted by Velasquez." "Dwarfs in Spanish painting..." "Velasquez, Ribera, Zubaran." "There is certainly evidence that Rembrandt saw Velasquez prints." "Why would Rembrandt want to make such a reference?" "Well, he might have wanted his audience to know that he'd been looking at such a reputed painter as Velasquez, though Velasquez was a member of the enemy party of Spain, as indeed was Rubens, the other great hero." "Velasquez, older than Rembrandt by seven years, was an admired painter, a consideration taking him, perhaps, amongst the fraternity of painters, way above politics." "And he had made himself a courtier, as, indeed, had Rubens." "We know that Rembrandt had ambitions to be a court painter, and we know that Rembrandt had painted himself, indeed, as a courtier." "Was this another demonstration of the proof he could paint anything, if it was, indeed, to be asked of him?" "GREENAWAY:" "There is much talk of this female creature being a mascot." "I'm in the painting to be to remind everyone of my father's hypocrisy and evil." "Many said later that I was there just as a mascot." "But what sort of mascot was that?" "There is absolutely no precedent in over 50 previous Dutch Militia paintings of there ever being a mascot present." "No young females, no goats, monkeys, rabbits, no mascot that might remotely be familiar, for example, from any football team." "These two females boldly, even accusingly painted incongruously in a body of tall men and walking, if not running, in the contrary direction to everyone else, are part of Rembrandt's accusation." "Their names are Marieke and Marita, both the illegitimate daughters of Rombout Kemp." "ROMBOUT KEMP:" "We are neighbors in the Breestraat." "How about making a contribution to the orphanage?" "We have many new children, orphaned by the Spanish Wars." "Then I think they must all be touching 30." "GREENAWAY:" "Marieke and Marita are commonly used as names for country girls and for cows, certainly not names chosen by the well-born and hardly by the bourgeoisie." "Both are derived from Maria, Mary..." "strongly Roman Catholic... so Roman Catholic, underprivileged, and probably illiterate country waifs." "Orphans?" "Bastards." "Rembrandt put this underprivileged country-girl orphan in a splendid dress from his property box." "To show who and to signify what?" "Certainly to demonstrate the calumnies of the orphanage." "GREENAWAY CONTINUES:" "Seen in later years as an element of Dutch life that appears sympathetic to the plight of the orphan, orphanages were not necessarily the places of charitable welfare they might have a reputation of being." "They certainly were a source for cheap labor... for females, cheap domestic work as servants and, it seems in some cases, for worse... in prostitution, even child prostitution." "The men come to the orphanage, and some of the older girls..." "Judith, she's about 13... are taken to the bedroom overlooking the garden, and they stay there for an hour or so." "I have stood in the gallery and watched." "There is some laughter, it's true, but mostly it's all done very quietly, and then there are tears." "But Judith often comes back with some flowers or a new ribbon, and once she was given a Passover cake which she shared with me." "And once, my father gave her a silver coin." "MARIEKE:" "He painted Marita deliberately with her face hidden..." "ACTOR:" "A whore!" "[Women scream]" "[Audience gasps] ...because she..." "She hated her scarred face." "But he got me to hold the coffeepot as a reference to the hot boiling water that Kemp threw in Marita's face that scarred her so badly." "GREENAWAY:" "Marita's face is hidden." "What of these hidden Rembrandt faces, Horatio and Marita?" "Were they in some way joined in some act of calumny?" "Was she ashamed to show her face?" "Was it a modesty or a disguise, or a consideration taken by Rembrandt alone, or was it requested by Marita herself?" "They cut me." "[Baby coos and squeals]" "I'm not a woman yet, and they cut me to make me bleed." "GREENAWAY:" "Did she not want to be recognized in this melée of officers and bourgeois by whom she might have had some nefarious relationship?" "Why tantalize us by adding her body but not her face and identity, permitting her, in effect, to be there, perhaps as a witness, but not permitting her to be seen?" "She adds nothing conceivably to the composition, the design, the activity, the movement." "There surely must be a reason why Marieke is given a female companion." "GREENAWAY:" "Hanging most prominently on the belt of the golden dress is a chicken, caught by its claws so that we can appreciate their significance." "The upturned chicken, secured so tightly about her waist, to point to her being tied to service lechery." "Barnyard hen, the white chicken feathers, a symbol of surrender and deliberately bred to lay sterile eggs, at the bottom of the pecking order, with her feet tied together, powerless, submissive, imprisoned so she could never ever run away." "Wings clipped, laid on her back, to forever service lust." " Who is the child?" " Oh, Marieke." "Kemp's illegitimate." "Carrying the pot of scalding coffee that ruined her sister's face." "She carries the musketeer's cockerel, hanging upside down, ready for plucking and fucking!" "Oh, cock-a-doodle-doo!" "My dame has lost her shoe!" "My master's lost his piddling stick..." "And doesn't know what to do!" "[Both laugh]" "Rembrandt's painting of the militia was cut." "It is not the same painting for us as it was for Rembrandt in 1642." "When it was finished, the painting was immediately put on public exhibition in the Kloveniers headquarters overlooking the river Amstel that gives Amsterdam its name, and the painting must have hung facing the big windows onto the river." "Then, in 1715, the painting was moved." "It was taken to the new town hall on the Dam Square, and the story goes that the position decreed for its new hanging was too small." "It was required to fit into a space between two doors." "No especial disrespect was intended, but it was indeed cut down to fit." "A slice was taken off the top, the right hand side, off the bottom edge, and the biggest section of all, some meter and a half, was cut from the left-hand side." "It is true that those who do not know of this event are not so especially underprivileged, but when you examine the painting closely, you can understand that something serious has happened to the original composition, which was carefully arranged and balanced" "to dramatize the accusation." "The center of the gravity of the painting has traveled to the right-hand side, removing the direction of compositional guilt." "Banning Cocq died in 1655, but his family must have known that to cut the picture might be to their social advantage." "After all, they had commissioned their own personal copy of the painting, and kept it in the house to be viewed by visitors and guests." "And the real reason that the large slice was removed from the left-hand side of the original painting was to disassociate themselves from the two married in-law relatives," "Floris and Clement Cocq." "No lice, no dogs, no crabs, no peepers." "For it was they, indeed, who had introduced extreme violence into the conspiracy to remove Captain Hasselburg." "It was these two who had suggested murder by shooting, disguised as a military accident, to move the impediment to the Banning Cocqs from taking over the Amsterdam Company of Musketeers." "Association with these two bad sheep of the family was not at all desirable." "They had to go, and they were cut out of the frame, cut out of the picture." "They disappeared into the gloomy vastnesses of history." "They disappeared with the separated canvas, which has never been found." "GREENAWAY:" "In his ready referencing from other painterly sources, it seems very likely that Rembrandt quoted the painting of the pikes from the Velasquez "The Surrender at Breda,"" "a painting sometimes, indeed, referred to as "The Lances" or "The Pikes,"" "which he most certainly saw as a print, bought through the Spanish Catholic print shops of Antwerp... a popular print amongst Catholic Netherlanders since it depicted a Spanish Catholic victory and a Dutch Protestant defeat." "Would Rembrandt be referencing the original with a challenging irony, for by 1642, the date of "The Night Watch,"" "the Dutch defeat had been reversed, and the Spanish pushed back, their victory at Breda in 1625 entirely cancelled." "And whereas there are 28 grouped pikes in the original Velasquez painting," "Rembrandt has reduced the number to 13 in "The Night Watch,"" "an unlucky number, made unlucky as a reference to the traitor at Christ's Last Supper, when a betrayal for money, Judas' 30 pieces of silver, set the whole Christian New Testament mythology inexorably rolling." "JACOB DE RO Y:" "Here I am in my splendid uniform, as an important member of this important club." "I look at you, and you look at me." "I'm watching you, and you're watching me." "It has been said that the only true thing the cinema ever invented was the glance." "Eye contact and the plethora of significances we can communicate with such a huge vocabulary of stares, winks and nods, blinks, smirks, smiles, grins, frowns, grimaces, and all the in-between stages and all the transitional ways" "of moving from one subtle glance to another underpin the multiplicitous ways of communicating subtle meaning." "But not so with Rembrandt... at least, not so in "The Night Watch."" "Are we not seeing here in "The Night Watch"" "a self-conscious deliberate wish not to make such engagements, partly from an antipathy towards the characters he met and drew and knew and partly so that we would make no identification by emotional transference?" "REMBRANDT:" "Kemp ought to be castrated, the hypocritical, lecherous old wolf." "Well, apparently he's using the orphanage as a child brothel." "Engelen should be booted out of the Kirchmarsal." "He's buying houses in the Jordaan and then burning them down again to claim the insurance." "Visscher, he's gone into tobacco after saying he wouldn't, and forcing down the price." "GREENAWAY:" "These almost expressionless faces in "The Night Watch"" "tell us virtually nothing about inner feeling, emotion." "Does Banning Cocq with his ragged, untrimmed moustache look blank and out to lunch?" "Does Little Willem look foxy?" "But what about Marieke, Jorisz, Geyle, Kemp, de Roy?" "Well, yes, de Roy." "Of the 34 people in the painting, he is one of the two people who are looking at us, straight at us, and the other is Rembrandt himself." "JACOB DE RO Y:" "All the people in your paintings are all actors, not real people at all." "Yet you have got them to do things which are real, except, of course, because you knew what you were doing, of your little portrait of yourself." "You knew you were being watched." "And you look at us, within the old tradition of these sort of paintings, with admirable self-consciousness." "You're giving yourself an old-fashioned position and responsibility in a new-fashioned painting which tries to deny that position and responsibility." "So, Rembrandt, master of all he commands, takes a position at the back of the painting." "He is almost equidistant from the back of his painted action as we, the viewers, are from the front of the action." "The puppet master operates from the back of the stage, maneuvering his puppets from behind for our amusement and delectation, and if we are indeed supposed to be the witnesses and maybe even the jury that has come to view Rembrandt's j'accuse accusations," "then we are doubly regarded as Rembrandt's audience as he puts on a show of prosecutor, provider of evidence." "What makes Rembrandt want to play a Hitchcock walk-on role?" "Rembrandt appears in so many of his own paintings in a walk-on part." "One answer could be for sheer amusement." "One answer could be that he always conveniently can be his own model simply by looking in a mirror at his own self-portrait." "But the best reason should surely be that he puts himself in his paintings as a witness." "Here, in "The Night Watch,"" "where Rembrandt makes a dangerous accusation with which, when Émile Zola coined that j'accuse phrase, meant an entirely fearless identification with his accusation," "Rembrandt wants to stand by his accusation and be a signed witness to it." "The only character in "The Night Watch,"" "apart from Rembrandt, who looks us in the eye is this man, Jacob de Roy, a man with a feather in his hat, dressed in dark red." "Is he trying to tell us something?" "He keeps on saying you ought to talk to the man in the red cloak and then decide." "REMBRANDT:" "Who is the man in the red cloak?" "GREENAWAY:" "He is the whistle-blower, the start of the journey, the entry point to the drama, which begins from our eye contact." "His eyes to our eyes, eyes for the business of seeing and looking, which is Rembrandt's business, the key to reading the painting as an indictment." "De Roy..." "etymologically, the "king,"" "and if you are a chess player, the red king." "Look at de Roy's face and see him related to the pointing hand of Rombout Kemp, follow Kemp's pointing index finger to the conspirators, and unravel the plot." "He must surely be our major witness." "[Two gunshots]" "GREENAWAY:" "The painting was presented to the commissioners." "It's so goddamn dark, you can't see anything anyway!" "Bring him some candles!" "[Laughter]" "You're trying to be Italian on us, are you, Rembrandt?" "And then the change in Rembrandt's career began to happen." "The characteristic ebullient verve and dash and grand gesture of the large painting evaporated." "Geertje Dircks, his long time servant, employed to look after Titus after the death of Saskia, assumed a significant place in the Rembrandt household and in the Rembrandt bed." "It was a turbulent arrangement, undoubtedly carnal, so hedged around with complicities, guilt, and curious equivocal behavior not at all in Rembrandt's favor, and when research began to come to light in the mid-20th century" "about this unsatisfactory relationship, there was a reluctance by historical scholars to permit the full force and evidence of the affair to come to light." "And how do you react to the suggestion that not only have you fulfilled her responsibilities in Rembrandt's house, but also in his bed?" "GEERTJE:" "Rembrandt has made promises to marry me." "And that you were there at the initial behest of his enemies?" "Rembrandt was deeply grieved and dejected at the death of his wife, as were we all." "REMBRANDT:" "Saskia!" "GEERTJE:" "I was present during two of Saskia's previous confinements and acted as midwife at the birth of her son Titus..." "REMBRANDT:" "Geertje, please look after her, will you?" "Piteous, get out, you smelly little Rembrandt!" "GEERTJE:" "And took considerable care of him afterwards, during the many months when she was poor soul when she was dying." "GREENAWAY:" "Saskia's reputation began to become exemplified as the perfect wife and companion, and Geertje was demonized as a gold-digger, a wastrel, a pawner of Saskia's jewelry, and exploiter of Rembrandt's good character." "They bribed me, you little tin-pot fucking painter!" "I've collected 18,000 guilders from them for being your little fat Friesian whore." "And I've collected 5,000 guilders from you for being your precious sors sniveling, dry, bum-wiping wet-nurse!" "[Spits]" "That's it!" "That's fucking it!" "And it's over, finished!" "GREENAWAY:" "There is a suspicion that the whole arrangement was too convenient too quickly after Saskia's death." "Perhaps it was an arranged affair organized by the revengeful "Night Watch" commissioners to help discredit their accuser." "GREENAWAY:" "Do you believe that Rembrandt's reputation is still as high as it was then?" "FERDINAND BOL:" "He is still respected by those who value good painting, but it is certain that his fortunes have changed considerably." "The commissions he now receives are somewhat different from before." "The parvenus, the newly rich and celebrated, and the men of business no longer rush to his studio to be painted like they formerly did." "It cannot be entirely accidental that the portraits of the rich wives and wealthy daughters of these self-made men suddenly disappear, the single and double marriage portraits disappear." "Carel still paints them." "I still paint them." "There are no more grand group portraits." "Even the clerics and divines disappear." "The self-portraits increase." "He has bought himself a large mirror in a black frame, and his own face is a constant companion." "Do you know how many years I have served this household?" "!" "I was here the night that Titus was born and the night that Saskia died!" "And that boy Titus needs a mother!" "Then the unappy Geertje Dircks was ignominiously rejected and turned out of the household." "Maybe her plotting and plotters had grown stale." "There was a new female in the limelight," "Hendrickje Stoffels." "The candle lights up your face better than any angel dare hope to be illuminated in all his innocence and glory." "REMBRANDT, OFF-SCREEN:" "And then I fell in love." "HENDRICKJE:" "And I was old enough to know what you were doing." "And it wasrt quite like that, but it will do." "GREENAWAY:" "In the London Trafalgar Square National Gallery, by accident or design, three Rembrandt paintings are hung with a curious significance... a self-portrait by Rembrandt, a Rembrandt portrait of Hendrickje, Rembrandt's second mistress, and a Rembrandt painting called" ""The Woman Taken in Adultery."" "In 1654, the Amsterdam church elders called Hendrickje Stoffels before them for a public reprimand." "I live with Rembrandt, and I take care of his young son Titus, and I am expecting Rembrandt's child." "And is this situation to your liking?" "Of course." "I freely entered into the relationship full-knowing that Rembrandt cared for me." "You are some 20 years younger than him." "Is that not a situation that will send tongues wagging and criticisms made?" "It might." "It has." "But it is a situation that is by no means unique." "Most husband-and-wife relationships in Holland characteristically have an age gap that sees the wife younger than the husband, and a great many men take a second wife after the death of their first wife, to look after the household," "care for the children..." "And sleep in their bed?" "And sleep in their bed." "But you are not married." "You are not husband and wife." "It is an arrangement that all of our friends, neighbors, and relatives accept, and how could strangers ever know otherwise?" "I am regarded as Rembrandt's common-law wife." "GREENAWAY:" "20 years' difference in age, master and servant, a woman taken in adultery, though strictly speaking, it was only fornication." "No marriage vows had ever been exchanged because Saskia had made a will that would have halved Rembrandt's fortune if he had ever remarried." "Hendrickje was publicly described as Rembrandt's whore." "Age difference, status difference, irrefutable visual evidence." "The prurient would be entertained." "To publicly post Rembrandt's whore-mongering was not conducive to further commissions, and the ploy worked." "The great and the good, the chattering classes, stopped their commissions." "The "Night Watch" commissioners were working behind the scenes." "The discrediting of Rembrandt received a further boost." "Now the only people happy and constant to employ Rembrandt were the non-God-fearing, the agnostics, the atheists, if any Dutch citizen was bold enough to admit to such an advanced position." "Amsterdam was the city of Spinoza, the Jew who dared to begin to voice that maybe "Gods" were in fact made by man and not the other way around, a philosophy that, not surprisingly, excoriated him." "With these deprivations, the money situation deteriorated." "Debtors began to call in their debts." "Mortgage repayments on the expensive house were called in, and Rembrandt, with the assistance of Hendrickje and his son Titus, began to try to build equivocal financial defenses, inventing a company that could not touch Rembrandt's remaining assets," "but the plans were unsatisfactory, the authorities not sympathetic." "Rembrandt had to move to a one-up and two-down suburban house in the Jordaan, now a fashionable-enough, gentrified, desirable area, but then almost out in the damp fields." "There were auctions of property and effects." "The large collection of curiosities, prints, and paintings had to go." "The authorities of the massive, new town hall on the Dam Square, which was regarded as a new wonder of the world by the Amsterdammers, commissioned Rembrandt, only to withdraw his painting, deemed to be unsatisfactory." "The revengeful commissioners settling into the now comfortable little Dutch Republic with its contacts around the world... wasrt New York, originally called New Amsterdam, and wasrt St. Petersburg built out of Peter The Great's Dutch experiences... had suppressed the threat of Rembrandt's indictment, buried it." "Amsterdam for three generations was the center of the economic life of the Western World, and most of that power was in the hands of the wealthy Amsterdam families with the likes of the Banning Cocqs and the De Graeffs" "and the Tulps and the Sixes, organized through financing and intermarrying in a solid block impermeable to the accusations of a grubby little painter living now in poverty in a West Amsterdam allotment." "They had successfully marginalized the one-time great and fashionable painter, squashed his lines of communication with the chattering classes, dried up his networking, and it could be said that the indictment in this painting had been the cause." "They closed up the case." "They could afford to continue to hang the painting in public for all intents and purposes, for they had successfully ruined the painter and smothered the indictment." "It is imperative that we reopen the case." "JACOB DE RO Y:" "The Banning Cocq conspirators knew that they were correctly indicted, and to hide their guilt, they revengefully embarked on a campaign to gradually destroy Rembrandt's wealth, reputation, and good fortune, to persuade the world that Rembrandt's celebrated group portrait" "of the Amsterdam Militia was just an innocent painting of exuberant soldiers rallying for musket practice." "Rembrandt, intelligent and perceptive man that he is, though a miller's son converted to an easy bourgeois, still stocking up his money like a peasant and trying to make friends in high places like parvenus, still sleeping with his servants" "because he could not sleep with the women he aspired to be equal to... he knew otherwise."