The Tax Collectors

When this panel came up at a Sotheby's sale in Monaco in December 1988, the French state used its right of pre-emption, which lets it step in ahead of private bidders, and bought it. The picture of two tax men was then assigned to the Ministry of Finance in 1989, and only in 2001 did it come back to the Louvre.

The museum also records it under another title, The Receiver of the Town of Reymerswaele and His Assistant, which would make the pair officials of the painter's own home town. One writes in a ledger with coins spread across the table, his companion beside him, both in extravagant headgear, with papers and a candlestick on the shelf above them. A copy made in Marinus's workshop is in the National Gallery in London. The Louvre dates its own version no more closely than the 16th century.