The Tribunal of the Brabant Mint in Antwerp

With Pieter Bruegel, the great era of the Flemish Primitives reached a new zenith, and at the same time the beginning of the end. With the death of this master whose art was firmly rooted in the fatherland, the coast was clear for the invasion of foreign ideas from Italy. There were successive influxes of imported art from Rome, Venice and Florence, and much work produced by Flemish artists in the Italianate style, some of it without a clear understanding of the principles involved. But in all this, there was nothing which could spark off a new creative development of specifically Flemish art.

In the second half of the 16th century, many Italianate painters looked to the work of Frans Floris, which was based on the formal language of Michelangelo, and Titian and Tintoretto’s use of colour, as their ideal. One of his followers in Antwerp was Maarten de Vos, who was strongly influenced by Venetian art, but did not adopt Michelangelo’s muscular figures. He was the inspiration behind these late Mannerists and the most productive painter of his time; his death marked the end of a period in the history of art in Antwerp. Shortly after, Rubens was to return from Italy in 1608 and give a powerful new impetus to the School of Antwerp.

The Tribunal of the Brabant Mint in Antwerp is a representative example of the work of de Vos, not just as a figure painter but also as a portraitist.

The painting, which is a tableau representing justice, was painted in 1594 to hang in the Law Court of the ‘Minters’ of the Duchy of Brabant. Such paintings were intended to remind both Judges and those seeking justice of their duty and responsibilities.

The members of the Brabant League of Minters commissioned the painting, and had themselves depicted (from the waist up) in the background, behind the symbolic figures from classical antiquity surrounding Justitia herself. Justitia, crowned with laurels and holding the scales of justice and a sword, triumphs over deceit and violence, symbolised by a masked woman caught in her own web and a violent miscreant who has been disarmed.

In the foreground on the left, Moses is depicted with the Tables of the Law, and on his right the Emperor Justinian, the codifier of Roman Law. On the right there is the bearded Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, who compiled sacred laws inspired by his wife, the nymph Egeria. On the far right, Pliny the Elder can be seen, with his left hand resting on the 37 scientific works he wrote.

In a nutshell, the message of this scene is that justice triumphs over deceit and violence, and that judges should judge according to sacred and civil law, guided by knowledge and science.