in this picture by nicolaes eliasz pickenoy, we can see they were much like team photographs, expressions of the collective spirit. on the other hand, each of the sitters was paying a tidy sum to have his own individual likeness rendered faithfully and flatteringly. so, conventionally, they're lined up in front of us in a shallow, elongated space, marked out from each other just by variations in uniform or by gestures of painful artificiality. rembrandt brushed aside all these compromises. instead of lining up his figures in a freezelike format, he scooped out great hollows of recessed space at the back and front of the painting. and this sculpted space really gave rembrandt the freedom that he needed to deploy his troops with animation. the drastically foreshortened hand of captain banning cocq and the drastically foreshortened halberd-- that weapon there-- of lieutenant ruytenburch give the painting the quality of propulsion, so much movement forward that it almost threatens to trample the beholder with an irresistible onrush of energy. the painter seems to make virtue out of energetic