There’s a moment in Rembrandt’s The Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild that has always stayed with me the first time I ever saw the painting. I was reminded of this feeling of disconnection when I attended a recent Global Connection Forum to address how modern loneliness drives political and cultural polarization. The forum was convened by the Global Initiative on Loneliness and Social Connection.
Gallery of Honour in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
Take just a second and see if you can recall this famous master painting before looking at it below. This February, I got to see the painting for the first time in real life at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam where it is housed in the Gallery of Honour, a section devoted to the 17th century Dutch Masters.
If you get the chance to see it in person, there was something I noticed and had been alerted to that I wanted to check out for myself. All of the men portrayed have an expression as if they’re looking right at you as you enter the room. It was eerie. I had seen the painting in books and online before, but it was an entirely different experience standing in front of it.
Five Men in a Room
Five men sit around a table. They are dressed alike and have a similar purpose in why they are there. But their bodies are not focused on the same thing. If they were sharing a meal, they would all be looking at the food. But in this painting, everyone is sitting at different angles. They are a collective, a guild. But it seems as if someone had walked into the room and caught the Syndics at a moment of polarization. There is a divide in this room that everyone knows about, but no one acknowledges.
Of the three nouns in this painting “Syndics” “Drapers” and “Guild” I had to look up the meaning of two of those words. (An aside: I realize thinking about nouns means I just put my teacher’s hat back on as summer classes began this week. Second aside: “of” is a preposition “the” is an article.)
Collective Vigilance for Public Good
Syndics were inspectors in the Dutch guilds during the 17th century, certifying quality and standards. Drapers were textile merchants, traders and sellers and buyers of cloth. The painting is a committee working on collective vigilance for the public good.
But in that moment Rembrandt captured through oil on canvas, there wasn’t a collectiveness and this is a committee that is anything but united. He painted the loneliness inside a public responsibility.
The reason I thought about this painting as the forum speakers were talking about how there is fragmentation of public trust, not just in the places we may think, but in countries all around the world, I understood what is happening now is the modern version of what Rembrandt painted in 1662.
It was the era of immense commercial wealth, global trade and governance. The Dutch Golden Age started in around 1586 and was over within 10 years after The Syndics of the Drapers Guild. In 1672, the Dutch Republic faced attacks by four other rising or envious nations: France (rising), England (rising), Munster (envious) and Cologne (envious).
When there is internal polarization in countries, the country’s leaders look externally to find a common enemy. This is why polarization is so connected to loneliness and is a global issue. It is loneliness expressed at scale and connections are needed at scale.
In The Syndics of the Drapers Guild, each of the inspectors are present, but they are alone. They are all tasked with the same job, but each of them see their purpose differently, uniquely. And in that individualization, they look, at least to me, as if they resent the other person doing the same work.
This is what polarization feels like. Back then in 1662, and today.