Affiliation:
1. The Courtauld Institute of Art
Abstract
The weighing scales held by the female figure in Maarten De Vos’s Tribunal of the
Brabant Mint are attributes of both Justice and Moneta. This chapter expands on
the conventional interpretation of the picture as a “justice panel” by comparing
it to the precious coins on which the Minters relied. Like a coin, the picture was
not only a quasi-sacred entity but also a form of rhetoric designed to achieve
specific ends at particular moments of exchange. The image solicited trust in
absolute authority but was also evaluated and used by all-too-human subjects.
The chapter opens up the interpretative space of an ideal courtroom, in which
the picture has previously been sequestered, to the complex politics and ethics
of the Mint in 1594, when the new Habsburg governor Ernest of Austria made his
Joyous Entry into Antwerp.
Publisher
Amsterdam University Press