Two grasping, weathered men face the viewer, crammed into the space and pressing into the sides of the canvas in this uncomfortably close arrangement. This was a subject both Marinus van Reymerswale and his workshop repeatedly returned to during the mid sixteenth century. Detail is minute, precision is exact and realism is intense, as van Reymerswale offers us a successful comment on avarice, greed and materialism in his hometown. Conservation by the National Gallery has revealed this painting to be a copy of a version now in the Louvre, identifiable through changes in the underpainting. A similar work, entitled The Moneychanger and his Wife sits in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. In the work from the National Gallery, van Reymerswale reuses figural types, costume and setting to illustrate two figures: the grasping tax collector on the right who sneers out towards the viewer, and the concentrating figure on the left, writing an account of the income of the town of Reymerswal...