Rembrandt's The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild

Rembrandt's painting The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild (also known as The Sampling Officials of the Drapers' Guild) was painted in 1662. This very large painting (75 1/4" x 109 3/4") hangs at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and is considered one of the great works of Rembrandt's later career. The Syndics is an example of a particular type of group portrait, the board of directors, and is one of the outstanding works of this type. In this portrait, as in many others, Rembrandt conformed to the rules for the genre but his approach was completely individual and his work stands out from all the others of the same type. Aside from being a beautiful, dynamic version of what could be a very boring subject, the Syndics painting also tells the viewer a great deal about Dutch culture at the time.

Portraits were a very popular form of art with the wealthy Dutch citizens of the seventeenth century. Paintings of individuals or couples were very common and group portraits of several kinds were popular. Group portraits were usually of families or one of three official types: civic guards (citizen militias that protected the towns); anatomy lessons, in which a doctor performed the public anatomy lesson and was shown surrounded by other members of the Surgeons' Guild; or Regents paintings which pictured "the governing officials of charitable institutions, guilds, and similar organizations" (Haak, Golden Age 108). Paintings of this third type were "exceedingly popular" beginning in the

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s, other paintings feature the same subjects, in the same general arrangement, and in some of them "the portraits are painted to perfection, each face with its own highly individualized features and expressions," yet it is only in Rembrandt's work that "one cannot look at them without wondering about their thoughts, their characters, their backgrounds" (Rembrandt 309). The problem of creating a portrait of a group of men that followed the standard style and yet was also an interesting painting for the viewers was solved by Rembrandt in several different ways. The first and most obvious thing about the painting is that it appears that the men have just been interrupted. The man who rises from his seat seems like he is about to greet somebody who has just come into the room. "The intruder is, of course, the viewer" and this immediate involvement of the viewer in the picture is one of the main reasons it has so much life in it (Witt et al. 136). The old idea of making the composition lively by having a servant enter with a message is given a new twist by Rembrandt who places the viewer in the position of the entering servant. By making all the men focus on one point, Rembrandt was able to give them an expression of interest.

Category: Arts - R