s on the Groenburgwal devoted to the textile industry" (Haak, Rembrandt 308). This was a rotating group of officials who were selected each Good Friday and served for a year. Since the date accompanies Rembrandt's signature, art historians are fairly sure which group of sampling officials this was. The five men in hats and the servant who stands behind them are known by name, religion, and profession. The fact that the men are of four different religions -- two Roman Catholics and three Protestants (Calvinist, Mennonite, and Remonstrant) -- but are gathered in "brotherly unity" for their work is "a typical symbol of the power of commerce and the tolerance of Amsterdam during the age of prosperity of the Dutch Republic," a time when few other countries showed such tolerance to various religions (Bredius 585).
In Rembrandt's time group portraits were painted "according to fixed schemes that hardly changed throughout the century" (Haak, Golden Age 99). In the early 1600s the formula for Regents' portraits "that would serve for several centuries" was first devised (Haak, Golden Age 110). The regents sat or stood and were usually grouped around a table covered with a cloth of some kind. A servant stood by, usually on the right side, and the regents usually wore hats while the servant remained hatless. Haak does not know whether this was because the men actually wore their hats inside or because they thought it looked more dignified in the portrait -- but the tradition lasted until wigs started to be worn at the end of the seventeenth century (Golden Age 110). The great problem of such compositions, of course, was that they tended to become very static -- especially considering that the men dressed almost identically.
There were several traditional ways of animating the portraits. Artists sometimes had the members hold or sit near "the attributes of their special functions -- pen and paper for the secretary, a moneybag for t...