Its real title is long: Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. The men paid to be in it, and instead of lining them up in neat rows Rembrandt painted them in the middle of moving out, with drums, muskets, a barking dog and a girl in gold running through the crowd.

It isn’t a night scene. The varnish darkened so badly over the centuries that people assumed it was, and the nickname stuck. In 1715 the canvas was cut down on all four sides to fit a wall in Amsterdam’s town hall.