On January 13, 1911, an unemployed former navy cook and shoemaker tried to slash Rembrandt van Rijn's The Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The attack failed to cut through the painting because its darkened varnish layer, then still in place, absorbed the blow. The incident is part of the long conservation history of one of the most famous Dutch Golden Age paintings, a civic-guard group portrait completed in 1642 and now central to the Rijksmuseum's public identity. Later attacks in 1975 and 1990 made the 1911 attempt a first chapter in the modern history of protecting canonical paintings from public vandalism.
The incident helped make The Night Watch a touchstone case in the security and conservation history of high-profile museum paintings.
