No king or sainted is depicted,
only Captin Cocq and his civil
guardsmen, assembling for a
parade
• this large “history” painting
never would have beeb
commissioned had Rembrandt
lived under a seventeenth
century-monarch.
• The painting hung in a banquet
room in an Amsterdam militia
hall, where years of candle and
fire soot darkened its varnish,
resulting in the mistaken notion
that this is a night scene