David Teniers the Younger, 'The Covetous Man', about 1648

In this powerful piece of storytelling, David Teniers the Younger has drawn on his ability to show character and incident with an insightful brush. He has illustrated one of Christ’s parables, in which Christ told of a rich man who squirrelled away his grain and his goods, hoarding them to ensure his future comfort instead of using them for charitable deeds. But God commanded that the man’s time to die had come: ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?’ (Luke 12: 20).

Teniers has lit up the faces of both figures, unsparing in his depiction of greed and covetousness. The old woman weighs coins on her handheld scales but stares at the old man with hard eyes and a downturned mouth. He seems almost unaware of her. The bags he clutches rest empty on his lap – whether he is waiting to take the money from the table or has just put it there, Teniers leaves us to decide. The man gazes out across the pile of deeds and the glinting coins on the table; it’s as if, in the darkness beyond, he already sees the end that awaits him. The room itself is shabby and uncared for. The accumulated clutter of bottles, books and boxes on the shelf above the woman’s head appear to be forgotten: they are gathering dust. They are there partly to symbolise the uselessness and transience of worldly objects and partly to show Teniers’s skill in painting still-life objects.

What is the relationship between the two figures? He wears a ring but she does not, though at the time in the Netherlands wedding rings could be worn on any finger, or sometimes not worn at all. Under her dull, heavy outer garment she wears a finely tucked chemise, and her bodice is embroidered with tiny jewels. Large bags crammed with money sit beside her elbow. His collar is clean and his coat sleeves are satin, but the fur trim looks scruffy and both the coat and his hat are old-fashioned, suggesting that he’s too miserly to waste money on new clothes. Whatever their relationship, beyond them in the shadows is a newly turned over hourglass, its sand beginning to run out – a symbol that the old man’s end is coming soon.

These moralising paintings were popular in the seventeenth century. Teniers painted several on the theme, including The Rich Man being led to Hell, which is far more startling than this picture – monsters and demons escort an old miser to his fate. The theatrical representation of the character in that picture is very different from the expressive handling of the restrained emotion on the faces here.