He made no attempt to be picturesque as in _The Night Watch_; he was content just to paint five men dressed in black, with flat white collars and broad-brimmed hats, and a servant.

With these simple materials Rembrandt produced the picture that the world has agreed to regard as his masterpiece.

Contemporary criticism says nothing about it.

The place of honour at the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam is given to _The Night Watch_, but it is _The Syndics of the Cloth Hall_--a simple presentation of five grave men seated at a table--that we remember with wonder and admiration.
Our enthusiast, having dwelt upon these three masterpieces, marking epochs in Rembrandt's life, referred again to the magnificent array of portraits scattered in such regal profusion through the thirty years that passed between the painting of _The Anatomy Lesson_ and _The Syndics_.

Then noticing, while enlarging upon the etchings, that his mother was casting anxious glances at the clock, he hurriedly referred to the last portrait that Rembrandt painted of himself, two years before his death.