The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis - Treatment and Reception

Treatment and Reception

The sword-oath was invented by Rembrandt. Note that there is one sword more in the painting – the one touching the front of the leader's blade – than Batavians holding them; other depictions of the event show handshakes, especially that engraved in 1612 by Antonio Tempesta as one of a set of thirty-six illustrations to designs by Otto van Veen in the book Batavorum cum Romanis bellum on the revolt. In the following year, the States General had commissioned a set of twelve paintings by Van Veen on the same subject for The Hague. These baroque works had entered the popular imagination as depictions of the revolt, and Flinck's design drew on the engraving of this scene. Van Veen followed baroque ideas of decorum by always showing Civilis in profile, with only his good eye visible.

A sketch survives (on the back of a funeral ticket dated October 1661) that shows that he had transferred the scene from Tactitus's "sacred grove" to a large vaulted hall with open arches. After delivery, which was by July 1662, the painting hung in place for a short period before being returned to him for reasons that are undocumented, but may have involved perceptions of a lack of the decorum felt necessary for history painting, lack of finish and an insufficiently heroic approach to the story. When all four paintings were in place, the discrepancy was evident. The council probably expected something similar in style, rather than the ominous grandeur of Rembrandt's conception. The chiaroscuro is typical of Rembrandt's late works, but the "eerie light and shadow and the iridescent greyish blues and pale yellows" are not.

In August 1662, when the painting was still there, Rembrandt signed an agreement giving a "quarter-share of his profits accruing from the piece for the City Hall and his prospective earnings from it." By 24 September 1662, however, when the archbishop and elector of Cologne Maximilian Henry of Bavaria was received in the town hall, Rembrandt's painting was gone. One objection may well have been the incongruous crown that Rembrandt had set upon Claudius Civilis's head and his dominating the scene, hardly features of a consultative, republican attitude. Blankert suggested that the painting had too much dark, unused space, compared with the others who had filled the image space with figures in a more conventional manner.

For Kenneth Clark:

Crenshaw writes that Rembrandt was away for a couple of months, and "... he did not have enough supporters in the right places when obstacles arose." Instead, Flinck's unfinished work was retrieved and rapidly finished off by the German painter Jürgen Ovens in four days. Ovens, then living in the house and using the studio formerly owned by Flinck, got paid 48 guilders for his work, whereas Flinck was promised 12,000 guilders for the series of twelve paintings. Jordaens and Lievens received 1,200 guilders for each of their works. In financial difficulties, Rembrandt was forced to cut it down drastically for easier sale and partly repainted it. The table was elongated, and he added the man on the left. In the next few months, Rembrandt was forced to sell the grave of his wife, Saskia.