Despite the ill-advised mandatory account (really, what's up with that?), the Rijksmuseum is providing a better service than the neighbouring Van Goghmuseum, which refuses to share anything but low resolution photos of Vincent van Gogh's works. Public museums are supposed to be custodians of culture, not IP owners.
You can zoom in a lot on the 2490 × 1328 pixels offered. When you hit the download button for the full version, you get nagged.
Edit: you can zoom in, and then it will offer up the painting in slices at a higher resolution. So in theory you could download those and stitch them together if you manage to hit an unscaled version.
the account might be a combination of "deter abusive downloads" and "help, we have not enough members" combined.. now thinking, the result of account gets sent to administration and then funders, too, as a report result. not defending the practice, but the institution has to defend and maintain, too.
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search/objects?q=nachtwacht&p=...
To avoid the dumb mandatory account login, just use https://bugmenot.com/view/rijksmuseum.nl . It worked just now (so be nice and leave it working).
Despite the ill-advised mandatory account (really, what's up with that?), the Rijksmuseum is providing a better service than the neighbouring Van Goghmuseum, which refuses to share anything but low resolution photos of Vincent van Gogh's works. Public museums are supposed to be custodians of culture, not IP owners.