Captain Franz Banning Cocq's arquebusiers are leaving their Doelen in broad day; the centralisation of sunlight from a high window led to the mistake, and nothing now will ever change the title.
How little these careless gallant arquebusiers, who paid the painter-man a hundred florins apiece to be included in the picture, can have thought of the destiny of the work! Of Captain Franz Banning Cocq as a soldier we know nothing, but as a sitter he is hardly second to any in the world.
But it is not the "Night Watch" that I recall with the greatest pleasure when I think of the Ryks Rembrandts.

It is that wise and serene old lady in the Van der Poll room--Elizabeth Bas--who sits there for all time, unsurpassed among portraits.

This picture alone is worth a visit to Holland.

I recall also, not with more pleasure than the "Night Watch," but with little less, the superb group of syndics in the Staalmeester room.

It is this picture--with the "School of Anatomy" at The Hague--that in particular makes one wish it had been possible for all the Corporation pieces to have been from Rembrandt's brush.