The Dwindling Night

The Dutch title says it plainly: the night being chased away. Night is a heavy figure wrapped in a dark cloak, on grey wings, turning away as it flees before the dawn. Its companions are the creatures of the dark hours, an owl on one side and a scatter of bats below. The whole canvas is kept in soft blues and pinks, the colours of a sky just starting to lighten. Those colours have faded over three centuries, and the museum notes that the paint layer was also worn thin by earlier cleaning campaigns.