Quentin Matsys, the painter of _The Banker and his Wife_ (No. 2029,
Plate XIX.), of which numerous replicas and variants are known, some
probably from the hand of his pupil Marinus van Roymerswaele, still
owes his training to the primitives of his race, but heralds the new
era which was to culminate in the art of Rubens, by passing from the
earlier minute precision of detail to a certain breadth of style and
boldness of brushwork, necessitated partly by the larger scale adopted
for his figures. Neither _The Saviour Blessing_ (No. 2030) nor _The
Virgin and Child_ (No. 2030A), both of which are catalogued under his
name, can be accepted as authentic; but the interesting genre group of
_The Banker and his Wife_ is not only fully signed and dated