The Batavian oath of allegiance to Claudius Civilis

The Academy of Arts' collections include Rembrandts Claudius Civilis. The painting can now be seen at the National Museum in Stockholm, where it is deposited. Previously, the painting has been on loan to the National Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Gothenburg Museum of Art.

The motif is taken from the history of the Netherlands and depicts the moment when the Batavians swear an oath of allegiance to rebel against Rome to their rebel leader Gaius Julius Civilis in AD 69. It is part of a larger painting that Rembrandt did for Amsterdam's town hall, but which was taken down after just a few months.

In 1798, the painting was donated to the Art Academy by Anna Johanna Grill, widow of Henrik Wilhelm Peill. As early as 1780, the family had deposited it in the academy's new premises on Fredgatan, but quite soon it was transferred to the Palace where it was displayed in the Royal Museum, the predecessor of the National Museum.

The history of painting

The first glimpse of what would become Claudius Civilis is found in a small sketch on the back of a funeral invitation from October 1661 that had been discovered in the Graphische Sammlung in Munich. The sketch shows that the "fragment" was originally the central part of Rembrandt's largest monumental painting. The painting originally measured 5,5m by 5,5m and had been commissioned to adorn a larger wall field in Amsterdam's new city hall. What is known about the tours around the order suggests that it must have been a difficult process for the artist whom we perceive today as absolutely foremost among the Dutch 1600th-century masters. During the latter part of his life, Rembrandt fell out of fashion for arbiters of taste, and the assignment therefore first went to his student, Govaert Flinck. The artist in question died prematurely in February 1661 and did not have time to complete the order, which included four wall panels of the same size.

The motif was an allegorical depiction of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish monarchy, and was of course best described by alluding to the ancestors of the "Batavians" who gathered for later rebellions against the Romans under the chieftain "Claudius Civilis" alternatively "Julius Civilis". Rembrandt was commissioned to carry out the "oath of allegiance" itself, and the painting was placed in July 1662. However, the client was not satisfied and demanded adjustments before an important visit from Cologne in September of the same year. Was the portrayal too realistic? Rembrandt did not have time to complete the desired changes, and thus the task went back to a student, who during four days of forced labor colored the sketch that Govaert Flinck had originally done.

Rembrandt's version thus never returned to its intended location and was cut down by the artist to the format it has today. More changes were made to adapt the presentation to the new format. The standing group around the chief was placed seated around an extended table. A masterpiece for the future was thus born, still relevant for its "summary" color management and boldly cropped "photographic" composition.

The road to the Academy of Arts

In 1891, a Dutch archivist discovered that a painting by Rembrandt, "The Oath of Allegiance of the Batavians to Claudius Civilis", originally hung in one of the galleries of the City Hall in Amsterdam. A "fragment" of the painting was confirmed a few years later to be in the possession of the Academy of Arts and deposited in the National Museum's building on Blasieholmen in Stockholm since 1866. However, the painting was originally placed in the Academy of Arts no later than 1780 and was permanently donated as a gift in 1798 by Anna Johanna Peill , f. Grill in memory of her husband Henrik Wilhelm Peill and for the benefit of the Academy.

The painting ended up in Sweden as a result of Swedish-Dutch connections and family ties, and was put up for auction in Amsterdam in 1734 (the year before the Academy of Fine Arts was founded) by Nikolaas Kohl, married to Sophia Grill, who must have inherited the painting to Swedish relatives. In the Academy's collections from 1883, the painting is cataloged as Jan Ziska from Trocznow receiving the promise of his followers to avenge the death of the reformer Jan Huss. In 1892 it is included in the catalog as Claudius Civilis urging his countrymen to rise up against the Romans.

At first the painting hung in the Art Academy's building, Fredsgatan 12 in Stockholm. There it functioned, among other things, as an object to paint from. A well-known painting by Elias Martins (in turn deposited by the National Museum in the Academy) from 1782 shows when Gustav III made his official visit to the Academy in 1780. In the painting, Rembrandt's painting hangs as a stately fund during the visit. An interesting detail here is that one of the swords in the air obliquely behind Claudius Civilis is missing in Elias Martin's presentation. The sword in question could be attributed to the conservator Erik Hallblad who, a few years later, was responsible for, in our modern eyes, the daring act of replacing the exclusive, Venetian, herringbone-patterned original cloth with a new one. How was that technically possible? The sword possibly became a necessary retouch after that adventure.

The research surrounding Claudius

The work of art is part of an extensive research project in Amsterdam where, among other things, new, more advanced photographic analysis techniques can provide more keys to the work's evocative history. The painting's background, motif and size make it comparable in importance to the Rijksmuseum's well-known work The Night Watch, also by Rembrandt. We may learn more about this and other details of the painting during the in-depth research with new methods and techniques underway in the Rijksmuseum.

There are more questions to answer. The painting we know as the Batavians' Oath of Allegiance to Claudius Civilis is only part of the originally intended work. What then happened to the remaining remnants of the specially commissioned highly exclusive canvas? Unless Rembrandt himself used it for other paintings of the period, one of his last students active in the studio, Aert de Gelder, would not have let precious material go to waste. The search for the remains of the missing cloth has only just begun. It would be an exhibition to look forward to, to be able to add the lost parts of the canvas to Claudius, albeit visibly with other motifs. The legal investigation and analysis carried out by the Academy shows that the painting should be regarded as an independent subject, a foundation that the Academy has forever taken ultimate responsibility for and care of, in good cooperation with the National Museum and currently also with the Rijksmuseum.