Old man seated at a table laid with coins

An old man sits alone at a table covered in coins, and that is the whole point. In the Dutch Republic of the 1640s, one of the wealthiest lands in Europe, painters in Haarlem kept turning out small warnings about what money does to a person. Hendrik Gerritsz Pot made this one as half of a pair. Its companion, now in a museum in Bonn, shows an old woman at a table of jewels and precious things. Together they are a lesson in avarice, the vice of clutching at wealth as the body fails. The face is not a portrait of any real man. Pot has given it no name, only an age, a heap of coins, and hands that will not leave them alone.