_Marinus van Romerswael_ (Flemish: about 1497-1573).
Marinus of Romerswael (his birthplace), also called "de Zeeuw"
(the Zeelander), was fond of this subject, the composition of
which he seems to have borrowed from Quentin Metsys, by whom
also similar pictures are common. In early life Marinus was
apprenticed to a glass-painter at Antwerp. Nothing is known of
his later life till towards its close, when he was residing
at Middelburg. "There, in 1566, in an iconoclastic outburst
of the populace, the churches of the town were wrecked; and
Marinus was accused before the tribunals of taking part in the
spoliation of the Westmonsterkerk. Being held guilty, he was
condemned on the 25th of June 1567 to perform an ignominious
public penance and to be banished from Middelburg for the
space of six years. An aged man then, he can scarcely have
survived his term of exile" (see authorities cited in the
Official Catalogue).
One inserts items in a ledger; the other puzzles over the particulars
of some business transaction. It is a powerful realisation of what
Ruskin calls the New Beatitude, "Blessed are the merciless, for they
shall obtain money." "The picture is remarkable," says Sir Edward
Poynter, "not only for its marvellous finish, and the energy of the
expressions, but for its luminous quality and the purity of the colour."