The expulsion of the money-changers from the temple

The Expulsion of the Money-Changers from the Temple, painted around 1675, belongs to Steen's engagement with religious subjects alongside his celebrated genre paintings. The biblical narrative of Christ driving the merchants from the Temple allowed him to combine the social observation that was his specialty — the crowd of traders and their wares, the chaos of commercial life — with the theological narrative of Christ's moral indignation. Steen's ability to set sacred narrative within the specific visual world of Dutch commercial society was characteristic of his most ambitious work, the religious content gaining resonance from its setting in a world that Dutch viewers would recognize as their own.

The dramatic scene is rendered with Steen's characteristic narrative energy, the chaos of overturned tables and fleeing merchants captured in lively, animated brushwork. The architectural setting provides a structured backdrop for the tumultuous action.