National Gallery Londres
Óleo sobre madeira - 92x74 - Aproximadamente 1540
Two strikingly ugly men in extraordinary clothing are seated at a table
in a panelled interior. One writes in a ledger, the other – his features
contorted into a sneer – grasps at a pile of coins. Documents, some of them
legible, are piled on a cupboard behind the pair.
Marinus van Reymerswale and his workshop produced a number of versions
of this very successful composition; many include manuscripts and legal
documents that contain references to the town and inhabitants of Reymerswale,
where Marinus probably spent much of his life.
All are satires of greed and corruption, and they might even have
contained recognisable caricatures of officials from Reymerswale. Tax
collectors were paid percentages of the revenues they collected, and had many
incentives to extort every last mite from taxpayers. The two men, hideous in
spite of their rich clothes, are vilified for their bureaucratic and legalistic
greed.
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