The Night Watch, 1642

Rembrandt's largest painting and the most famous group portrait ever made. Commissioned in 1642 by an Amsterdam militia company, who each paid toward their own likeness — and got something nobody expected. Instead of a tidy row of faces, Rembrandt caught them mid-movement, spilling out of the darkness into a shaft of light. The title is a misnomer, invented centuries later: it was never a night scene. Varnish had simply darkened it. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.