Here is some interesting information from Wikipedia on the Nightwatch:
Rembrandt painted The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq between 1640 and 1642. This picture was called the Nachtwacht by the Dutch and the Night Watch by Sir Joshua Reynolds because by the 18th century the picture was so dimmed and defaced by time that it was almost indistinguishable and it looked quite like a night scene. After it was cleaned, it was discovered to represent broad day—a party of musketeers stepping from a gloomy courtyard into the blinding sunlight.
A very nice representation of a much more civilized era.
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I'm not sure about that. The picture was painted between 1640 and 1642 and at that time the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was raging in Europe and the struggle of the Netherlands to gain its freedom from Spain (The Eighty Years War 1568-1648) was still taking place, while 1642-1649 saw the Civil Wars in Great Britain and Ireland. (Quite a number of officers and troops who fought in the English Civil Wars had previously been fighting in the Thirty Years War.) In many ways, these three wars were the first examples of all inclusive war where the distinction between the military and civilians began to be ignored.
