Marinus van Roymerswaele. Tax Collectors

Tax Collectors came into the Hermitage as part of the famous British collection of Sir Robert Walpole in the late 18th century, at the time when Catherine the Great was buying up whole collections of artworks. However, the fact that it came from that source was established relatively recently. When it arrived in the Hermitage, the picture was considered to be a work by Quentin Massys, and later by his studio. In the 20th century, scholars began to believe its creator was Marinus van Roymerswaele (Netherlands, circa 1490 – circa 1567). A large number of repetitions of the subject exist. There was probably considerable demand for a composition of this sort – both the artist himself and a pupil in his studio reproduced it several times. Versions of the painting can be found in collections in Paris, London, Madrid and Warsaw.

The personages that Roymerswaele skilfully depicted, collectors of city taxes, draw our gaze, and looking at them the viewer can grasp the character of these men and the attitude that the artist and his contemporaries had towards them. The entries in the ledger and the various pieces of paper in the background can be deciphered as records of incoming tax payments. The coins have been painted very carefully, to the degree that many of them can be identified.

The tax collectors' headwear arouses particular interest. It is anachronistic for Roymerswaele's lifetime. For that reason there are several suggestions as to why such hats appear in the painting – either this was a sort of uniform that persisted in the tax collectors' attire from earlier times or, perhaps, this element of dress was copied from a painting by Jan van Eyck, for whose period such headwear was quite customary.

Over its long life, the picture in the exhibition has undergone various restoration measures, including being transferred from a wooden panel to canvas by F. Rybin in 1841. One of the restorations took place immediately after its return from Sverdlovsk, where masterpieces from the Hermitage were evacuated during the war. It would seem that water got onto the painting while it was crated up and the leak was only noticed after it came back to Leningrad. Being damp for a prolonged period of time had a negative effect on the state of the paint layer and varnish. Despite the remedial work performed in the 1940s, traces of the leak remained visible until recently.

In the course of the present-day restoration the dark yellowed varnish was removed as well as overpaintings of the artist's original work, and the colour was returned to those areas affected by the leak. Thanks to the scientific studies carried out and the efforts of the Hermitage restorers, the work, freed of later accretions, soiling, overpainting and yellow varnish now appears before the viewer as Roymerswaele intended.

Roymerswaele's Tax Collectors was first presented to the public after the completion of its restoration at the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts. Then the picture went on show in the Great Hall of the Menshikov Palace in the exhibition "Marinus van Roymerswaele. Tax Collectors. Conservation Completed".

The curator of the exhibition "Marinus van Roymerswaele. Tax Collectors" is Nikolai Leonidovich Zykov, deputy head of the State Hermitage's Department of Western European Fine Art.

The restoration of the painting was performed by Valery Yuryevich Brovkin, an artist-restorer in the Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Easel Paintings, part of the State Hermitage's Department of Scientific Restoration and Conservation.

Locals and visitors to Kaliningrad can visit the exhibition from 26 October to 3 December 2023.

The programme for the Hermitage Days in Kaliningrad also includes thematic master classes, guided tours and an extensive series or lectures.