Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic “I sometimes feel like a monkey in a zoo,” says Esther van Duijn, one of eight conservators restoring Rembrandt’s 1642 masterpiece “The Night Watch” in a glass chamber in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, as the public looks on. “I’m mostly worried that I’ll drop my scalpel and everyone will see.”Operation Night Watch — as the museum is promoting the process — is now in its sixth year and has just moved from the research phase to the beginning of the removal of the varnish added in the mid-1970s. The project is “putting our profession on the map”, says van Duijn. “We will reach a point when all the things we want to remove are removed and what you see is mostly Rembrandt, 400 years old. We try to work with the idea that the public has a right to see the painting. We have art so people can look at it.” But is she happy they are also looking at her? “No,” she smiles. “That’s something else.”In the years since Rembrandt painted it, “The Night Watch” — which depicts a company of civic guardsmen and measures a monumental 363cm by 437cm — has become a national symbol for the Dutch. It’s impossible to overstate its significance to the Rijksmuseum. Not having it on view would be like the Louvre without the “Mona Lisa” or Oslo’s Munch Museum minus “The Scream”. It is a crowd-creator as much as a crowd-pleaser.Delving into the picture’s conservation history requires “detective work”, says van Duijn. The picture has undergone 31 known treatments, some rushed, ill-considered or invasive. And then there are the scars of world events and acts of malice.In the early 18th century the picture was cut down when it was moved to Amsterdam town hall, losing two figures on the left side of the composition. During the second world war the picture was hidden first in a bunker on the coast, then in a cave in Maastricht. A knife attack on the painting in 1911 failed, but another in 1975 resulted in several serious slashes. And, in 1990, an escaped psychiatric patient sprayed acid on the work. Today, there is an evacuation slit in the floor of the gallery through which the painting can be lowered in the event of an emergency. The most surprising thing about the picture is its survival, says van Duijn.“The Night Watch” hangs at the end of the museum’s Gallery of Honour — an extended corridor featuring masterpieces of the Dutch Golden Age — as if it were an altarpiece, an icon of devotion. “If you look at the floor plan of the museum, it was designed around ‘The Night Watch’,” says Taco Dibbits, the museum’s director-general. “It embodies the civic society of the Netherlands.”Rembrandt doesn’t paint a formal group portrait, Dibbits continues, “he paints a story”. It is a tale of troops marching out with their guns. “If you compare it to your class photo at school, this is as if all the children are still running around.”The difficulties with its restoration are threefold. “One, it’s very big. Two, it’s been treated a lot. And three, Rembrandt had an incredibly varied technique,” explains Dibbits. The discoloured varnish is removed using microfibre cloths treated with solvent. “The paint is 17th century, it’s rock hard, and the varnish isn’t.” However, the Dutch master’s impasto painting left a topography of dips and quiffs, areas where the conservators have to revert to using swab-sticks and a steady hand.The conservators are working on the picture while it remains on the wall, rather than treating it on a horizontal bench in a studio. Custom-built elevator platforms, equipped with scanners and microscopes, raise them to specified sections of the canvas. After the varnish and old overpaint has been removed, a new under-varnish is added, followed by retouching with water-based paints and then a closing varnish. There is no deadline.It is “millimetre work or, as they call it in Dutch, monk’s work”, says Dibbits. “You have to have a certain calm. And also keep your calm because they’re doing it with 2.5mn people watching.”The transparency of the process doesn’t extend to its cost. “We don’t disclose the figures,” says Dibbits. He’ll only say it is “several million” and it has been funded by private donors. The chief sponsor is Dutch group AkzoNobel, which owns the Dulux paint brand and has assisted the museum in analysing Rembrandt’s pigments.On the day I visit, conservators Ige Verslype and Lisette Vos are busy applying solvents in the chamber. Entering the enclosed space is eerie; I can feel eyes on me as I walk self-consciously over to the picture. Doesn’t the stillness and the scrutiny get to them? “If I was working alone, I’d feel more uncomfortable,” Verslype says, rifling through her tray of conservation implements. “These trolleys with our materials, we take them out every morning. And then I really feel like I’m stepping on stage.”Visitors take pictures of the team, film them and post images and footage on social media. But the restorers wear black AkzoNobel-branded Operation Night Watch lab coats, notes Verslype. “It helps: they make you more anonymous.”But what do the visitors make of this sedate spectacle? “My son Max, who’s eight, calls the painting ‘naked’,” says Paul van den Biesen, a Dutch art historian who often visits with his family. “He learnt at school that removing the later paint layers is like undressing, so now he imagines ‘The Night Watch’ will be carefully redressed again. I’ve tried to explain to Max that this is something he’ll likely never see again in his lifetime, which makes watching history being uncovered right in front of us even more special.”Ally, a young American tourist, agrees that this is a unique, if somewhat strange, opportunity. “It’s more uncommon than just seeing the painting. I think it’s actually cooler,” she says, peering through the glass. “It’s like we shouldn’t be seeing it.”rijksmuseum.nlFind out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen
