Christ Driving the Money-changers from the Temple

Christ driving the money-changers from the Temple was a subject of particular resonance in Antwerp, where the collision between sacred values and commercial life was a daily reality in Europe’s greatest trading city. Metsys’s version from around 1520, now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, treats Christ’s righteous anger with the same intensity he brought to his satirical portraits of greedy moneylenders. The subject implicitly critiqued the very commercial culture that sustained Metsys’s own career.

Christ’s violent action creates a dynamic diagonal across the composition, scattering the merchants and their goods. Metsys uses varied physiognomies to characterize the money-changers’ surprise and fear, applying his gift for caricature to narrative purpose.