Mystery of the small dog in Rembrandt’s “round of night” was finally unraveled

When a curator noticed an image of an extremely similar dog, created by a less known Dutch artist, wondered if he would have inspired the dog in the famous 1642 Rembrandt painting

When in 1642 Rembrandt van Rijn He presented his monumental masterpiece “The Night Round”, the audience had never seen anything like it, tells.

While typical military portraits showed men in static poses, the painting of the Dutch artist portrayed a group of guards at a time of action, and his masterful use of light and shadow Transmitted energy and movement through the screen of almost 4.5 meters long.

In the middle of the confusion of the scene, some observers probably did not notice the Small dog shrunk in the shadows.

Now, a insightful researcher discovered the reference material who may have inspired by the dogwhich is at the feet of a drummer, in the lower right corner of Rembrandt’s screen.

“The drummer hits his drum, and the dog reactsstarting to bark ”, account Anne Lenders16th century painting curator at Rijksmuseum, to. “There is really a suggestion of noise and movement. The dog increases the liveliness of painting and the drama of the scene.”

Lenders is part of Rijksmuseum, a restoration effort that extends for several years at the Amsterdam Museum, which houses Rembrandt’s masterpiece. After working so closely with the painting, it ended up know it deeply.

Recently, When visiting an exhibition at Zeeuws Museuma few hours from Rijksmuseum, in the Dutch city of Middelburg, something caught Lenders’s attention: An image of a dog that seemed strangely familiar to him.

“As soon as I saw this dog, I immediately thought of the night round”Lenders said to.” I recognized him by the way he turned his head. “

Lenders compared the image with a photograph of Rembrandt’s dog on his mobile phone and was impressed by the similarities between the two dogs. Both are curved over the front paws, with their head facing up at an almost identical angle. The mouths are slightly open and the collars have a similar style.

Still, the Images are not identical. Rembrandt’s dog is not so close to the ground and the tongue is visible. The two dogs are mirrored images each other, looking in opposite directions.

The image Lenders found in the museum was on the title page of a 1619 book by Dutch writer Jacob Cats. This version of the work was an adapted engraving of a drawing of Adriane van Vennewho, like Rembrandt, was a seventeenth -century Dutch artist.

O Original Drawing of Van de Venne is invertedwith the dog looking in the same direction as Rembrandt’s. The work is found in the collections of Rijksmuseum, but so far No one had noticed the similarities.

“It is remarkable that new discoveries are still made About one of the most studied paintings in the world, almost 400 years after being created, ”said Taco Dibbits, director of Rijksmuseum.“ This discovery provides us with an even greater understanding of Rembrandt’s thought process in creating this work. ”