Rembrandt's outstanding portraits of his hometown, Amsterdam, reflect the city's light and shadow. During the seventeenth century, Amsterdam became one of the leading economic centers in Europe. The city and its population grew rapidly as trade and art also flourished. The influential bourgeoisie shaped the fortunes of the city and confidently celebrated itself in magnificent group portraits by the city's leading artists, most notably, Rembrandt. More than in any other city, the group portrait in Amsterdam developed as a mirror of a powerful social elite, especially the marksmen's guilds' members and the regents of social institutions. However, their good fortune had its price, for the roots of the city's Golden Age lay in a colonialist trading policy and a rigid social order. Rembrandt's Amsterdam shows both sides of the coin with images and stories of a plural society that tell of wealth and inequality, good fortune and ruin, and power and impotence.
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