Weighing Things Up in Maarten de Vos’s Tribunal of the Brabant Mint 1594 :

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.