L'avarice

L'Avarice (Avarice), painted around 1637, is another of Stom's allegories of the deadly sin of greed, a subject he painted in several versions. The counting-house or money-table scene was a standard vehicle for this moralizing theme in Northern European art, and Stom's candlelight treatment transforms a didactic genre subject into a psychologically compelling study of obsessive absorption. Stom's mastery of candlelight effects was among the most technically accomplished of all Caravaggist painters, surpassing many of his contemporaries in the subtlety of his graduated shadows and the warmth of his artificial illumination.

The miser's face, lit from below by the candle on the table, takes on an almost demonic intensity that reinforces the moral message. Stom renders the coins and documents with the textural precision of Dutch still-life painting, transplanted into his Italian tenebristic manner.