Completion of The Night Watch (1642)
- When
- 1642
- Where
- Amsterdam
- Episodes
- 1
Rembrandt completed The Night Watch in 1642, a major group portrait commissioned by the militia company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. The work, created in Amsterdam, became his most famous painting and a defining piece of the Dutch Golden Age.
Episodes
Background and detail
Commission and Context. The painting was commissioned by the Militia Company of District II, led by Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. It represented the most substantial group portrait commission Rembrandt received during this period, allowing him to address compositional and narrative challenges in a new way.
Creation and Payment. Rembrandt was paid 1,600 guilders for the work, a significant sum at the time. The painting was likely completed in a lean-to in his garden because its size exceeded the capacity of his Amsterdam studio.
People involved
- Rembrandt van Rijn · Painter
- Frans Banninck Cocq · Captain of the Militia Company
Sources
- The Night Watch Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-01
- Rembrandt Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-08
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.