Die Verschwörung des Claudius Civilis

The Amsterdam city council wanted a hero for its brand-new town hall, so around 1661 they turned to the ancient rebel Claudius Civilis, the one-eyed chieftain who led the Batavians against Rome and who the Dutch claimed as a kind of founding ancestor. Rembrandt gave them an enormous canvas, roughly five metres each way, showing the conspirators swearing their oath by torchlight, their raised swords meeting over the table. The council hated it. Within months it came down, Rembrandt may never have been fully paid, and to sell it he cut the painting down to about a quarter of its original size, which is the fragment that survives in Stockholm. What likely offended them was the crown Rembrandt set on the chieftain's head and the way he loomed over everything, hardly the sober, republican image the city wanted of itself. Civilis stares out with his single good eye, lit hard against the surrounding gloom.