Rembrandt's "night watch" will spend years of restoration

AMSTERDAM – The Rijksmuseum announced Tuesday the restoration of Rembrandt's "Night Watch", a monumental group portrait that occupies a prominent place in the Dutch National Museum and in the hearts of the Dutch people. The restoration will last several years, while the painting remains exposed in the gallery of honor of the museum, so that the public can observe the process.

Taco Dibbits, director of the museum, said in an interview that it would be a "gigantic enterprise" and that "the largest research and conservation project ever carried out by the Rijksmuseum". He compared it to the scale of the restoration of the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo Vatican. He did not provide an estimate of the cost of the renovation, but said it would be "millions over several years".

Rembrandt's painting dating back to 1642, formerly known as "District II Militia Company under the command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq", has not been restored since 1976, after a visitor from Museum attacked it with a bread knife, placing markings of the surface, carving a hole seven feet wide and tearing off some of the canvas.

At that time, the museum was able to restore the painting and touch up the surface, but some alterations have now turned yellow, said Mr. Dibbits, and need to be redone. Museum curators have also noticed that the lower left corner of the painting, where a small dog is, has become white over time and they do not know why.

The Rijksmuseum plans to study the painting for about eight months, using new digitization technologies that were not available in previous restorations, such as X-ray fluorescence digitization, which explore different layers of the surface of the painting to determine the tasks to be performed.

The restoration itself will probably take at least two years, said Dibbits. Throughout the process, a transparent showcase will be built around the board, scientists and restaurateurs, so that visitors can see progress.

Mr. Dibbits is reminded to have attended the previous restoration of "Night Watch" when he was a child and that he was growing up in Amsterdam. "I was 9 years old and we went several times with family to watch it," he said. "It's very impressive because you can see the process and you basically stand in the theater of operations."

Once completed, Mr. Dibbits hopes that the investigation and restoration will allow researchers to better understand the work and will provide visitors with a clearer sense of the original painting. "Visually it will be a big change," said Dibbits. "You will be able to see many more details, and there will be areas of the painting that will be much easier to read."

"There are many mysteries of painting that we could solve," he added. "In fact, we do not know much about how Rembrandt painted it. At the last conservation, the techniques were limited to x-ray photos and we now have many more tools. We will be able to look into the creative mind of one of the brightest artists in the world. "