The Moneylender and His Wife

A money-changer weighs gold coins on a delicate balance while his wife, beside him, turns the leaves of an illuminated prayer book - though her eyes and fingers stray toward the glinting coins. The picture weighs the world against the spirit and catches attention sliding the wrong way. Matsys loads the shelves and table with meticulous Netherlandish still life and sets a small convex mirror in front, reflecting a window and a tiny reader, a quiet echo of van Eyck. From mercantile Antwerp, it turns the old religious craft of Bruges toward a new subject: the moral life of money.