Few paintings have been looked at, studied and reproduced as much as The Night Watch. Rembrandt finished it in 1642 and, almost four centuries later, it still holds secrets. Many of them were not in plain sight: they came to light thanks to Operation Night Watch, the research and restoration project the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam launched in 2019 with a team of more than twenty scientists, conservators, curators and photographers.
Here are six of those secrets. Some change what we thought we knew about the painting, and one even changes what we thought we knew about its name.
A painting that had a piece cut off
The first thing to know is that the painting on display today is not exactly the one Rembrandt delivered. In 1715 it was moved from the headquarters of the arquebusiers' company to Amsterdam Town Hall, the building that is now the Royal Palace on Dam Square. The canvas was too large for the spot intended for it, between two columns, and instead of looking for another place, it was decided to trim it.
Strips were cut from all four sides, and the largest one came from the left. With it disappeared two men and a boy, along with the top of the arch, the balustrade and the edge of a step. Those fragments have never been found. The loss did not just remove figures: it also altered the balance and the sense of forward movement in a scene designed to convey motion.
We know what was there thanks to a much smaller copy, attributed to Gerrit Lundens, made between 1642 and 1655 at the request of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq himself. It is now in the National Gallery in London. It measures barely half a square meter, compared with almost sixteen for the original, but it works as a historical document: it records what was lost.
In 2021, the Rijksmuseum used that copy to reconstruct the missing edges with neural networks trained on Rembrandt's technique and color. The result was mounted around the original and made it possible to see the complete composition for the first time in three hundred years. Still, it is a reconstruction, not a recovery: the authentic fragments remain missing.
The sketch Rembrandt painted over
Beneath the visible paint there is another image. Using macro X-ray fluorescence scanning (MA-XRF), researchers detected a preparatory sketch that Rembrandt laid down directly on the canvas before building the final scene. It is neither a clean drawing nor a fixed plan, but a quick sketch made with light-colored paint, in which we can see the artist deciding where to place shapes, positions and movement.
That sketch also shows that Rembrandt changed his mind. One of the most curious adjustments affects a figure almost nobody looks at: the dog.
The dog that came from another drawing
In the lower right corner of the painting, near the drummer Jacob Jorisz and behind Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, a dog is barking. For a long time it was considered a minor detail, probably studied from life. In 2025 the Rijksmuseum announced that Rembrandt had based it on a drawing by another artist.
The discovery was almost accidental. Anne Lenders, curator of seventeenth-century Dutch painting, was visiting an exhibition on Adriaen van de Venne at the Zeeuws Museum in Middelburg when she saw a dog and immediately thought of The Night Watch. She recognized it by the turn of its head. The drawing, made in 1619, was a design for the engraved title page of Self-stryt, a book by the poet Jacob Cats, and it has been in the Rijksmuseum's own collection for more than a century.
The similarities are striking: the head turned upward in the same direction, the slightly open mouth, the dark line marking the eye, the skullcap divided into two parts, and the collar. There are also differences. Van de Venne's dog lies down with its chest against the ground, while Rembrandt's stands on all four legs. And here the hidden sketch comes back: in that first version, the dog had its front leg more bent and its chest closer to the ground, making it even more similar to the original drawing.
There is no record that Rembrandt owned that drawing. Most likely he knew the image through the engraving printed in the book, which fits perfectly with the way he worked: taking existing models, studying them and transforming them.
The girl nobody can explain
At the center of the composition, among the armed men, stands a small, luminous figure: a girl dressed in golden tones with a dead chicken hanging from her belt. Her presence remains one of the painting's great enigmas, and no one has been able to prove exactly who she is or what she represents.
What we do know is that the chicken, with its claws clearly visible, is interpreted as an allusion to the emblem of the arquebusiers' company (the clauweniers). She also carries a drinking horn, an object associated with the group's banquets. Beyond the symbolism, she serves a visual purpose: Rembrandt built the scene around strong contrasts of light and shadow, and the girl is one of the points that draw the eye, along with the captain, dressed in black with a red sash, and the lieutenant, in yellow, whose costume even receives the shadow of the captain's hand.
The man with the red nose
Among the militiamen, one stands out dressed in red. His name was Jan van der Heede, an Amsterdam merchant who served as a musketeer in the company. His face has a reddened, blotchy nose that has given rise to all kinds of speculation: was he ill, sunburned, or simply a little drunk?
The Rijksmuseum's research points in another direction: the current appearance of that area has been altered by past retouching and cleaning. In other words, what we see today is not necessarily what Rembrandt painted. Conservators are using new techniques to recover its original look. And there is one more detail: according to the museum, the choice of such a striking outfit also says something about the sitter's personal situation.
The night that never existed
The last secret is in the title itself. Rembrandt did not call his work The Night Watch. Its original name was Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, and the nickname we know it by today began to be used toward the end of the eighteenth century.
The confusion has an explanation. For centuries the painting was covered with layers of darkened varnish and grime that gave the impression of a night scene. When that varnish was removed in the 1940s, a different light appeared: that of a sunny day, with colors far brighter than anyone had believed. The scene never took place at night. The name was a mistake caused by time, but by then it was too late to change it.
A missing fragment, a hidden sketch, a dog borrowed from another drawing, an unexplained girl, a face altered by restorers and a mistaken title. All of that fits inside a single painting that seems to have said everything. Almost four centuries after Rembrandt finished it, The Night Watch keeps showing that even the most famous works can hide stories we have yet to learn how to see.
THE ARTWORK
The Night Watch (De Nachtwacht)
Artist Rembrandt
Year 1642
Medium Oil on canvas
Style Baroque
Size 363 cm × 437 cm
Location Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
