Interior

Set in an office, probably that of a bank, the scene contains several groups of figures talking animatedly among themselves. Some have dark hair and wear very plain dark clothes; others are dressed in brighter colours. At the table in the centre a man is intent on weighing gold coins, while in the background a number of bookkeepers write in large blue ledgers, as if recording the customers’ sums of money and interest. A moralistic addition brings a note of seriousness to the scene: on the left is the figure of a beggar asking for alms in this temple of wealth.
The work is fairly typical of Dutch art in the seventeenth century, which was far-removed from the variety and sumptuousness of Italian Baroque style, concentrating instead on the production of genre scenes depicting aspects of daily life. Many paintings of this type were produced and they were extremely popular with the middle-class and with merchants, making it difficult to identify the author of the work. In all likelihood it was painted by an artist working in the Netherlands towards the middle of the seventeenth century and frequenting the circle of the Dutch painters Barent Avercamp and Simon Kick.