orizon. When we speak of aerial perspective,
we already presuppose a little chiaroscuro.

Any other than Rembrandt, in the Dutch school, might sometimes make us
forget that he was obeying the fixed laws of chiaroscuro; with him this
forgetfulness is impossible: he has so to speak framed, co-ordinated and
promulgated its code, and if we might believe him a _doctrinaire_ at
this moment of his career, when instinct swayed him much more than
reflection, the _Night Watch_ would have a redoubled interest, for it
would assume the character and the authority of a manifesto.

To envelop and immerse everything in a bath of shadow; to plunge light
itself into it only to withdraw it afterwards to make it appear more
distant and radiant; to make dark waves revolve around illuminated
centres, grading them, sounding them, thickening them; to make the
obscurity nevertheless transparent, the half gloom easy to pierce, and
finally to give a kind of permeability to the strongest colours that
prevents their becoming blackness,--this is the prime condition, and
these also are the difficulties of this very special art. It goes
without saying, that if anyone ever excelled in this, it was Rembrandt.
He did not invent, he perfected everything; and the method that he used
oftener and better than anyone else bears his name.

When explained according to this tendency of the painter to express a
subject only by the brilliance and obscurity of objects, the _Night
Watch_ has, so to speak, no more secrets for us. Everything that might
have made us hesitate is made clear. Its qualities have their _raison
d'etre_; and we even come to comprehend its errors. The embarrassment of
the practitioner as he executes, of the designer as he constructs, of
the painter as he colours, of the costumer as he attires, the
inconsistency of the tone, the amphibology of the effect, the
uncertainty of the time of day, the strangeness of the figures, their
flashing apparition in deep shadow,--all this results here by chance
from an effect conceived contrary to probability, and pursued in spite
of all logic, not at all necessary, and with the following purpose: to
illuminate a real scene with unreal light, that is to say, to clothe a
fact with the ideal character of a vision. Do not seek for anything
beyond this audacious project that mocked the painter's aims, clashed
with received ideas, set up a system in opposition to customs, and
boldness of spirit in opposition to ma