Every face in it--and there were eight living faces--was a masterpiece of portraiture, and all were fitly grouped and united in the rapt attention with which they followed the demonstration of their teacher.
In 1642 he received an order to paint a large picture of one of the companies of the City Guard of Amsterdam.

According to the custom of the day, each person portrayed in the picture contributed his equal share towards the cost of the whole, and in return expected his place in it to be as conspicuous as that of anybody else.

Such groups were common in Holland in the seventeenth century.

The towns were proud of their newly won liberties, and the town dignitaries liked to see themselves painted in a group to perpetuate remembrance of their tenure of office.

But Rembrandt knew that it was inartistic to give each and every person in a large group an equal or nearly equal prominence, although such was the custom to which even Franz Hals' brush had yielded full compliance.