Avarice (Avaritia), from "The Seven Deadly Sins"

Print • Prints

Created in 1558 during the Renaissance period, this work belongs firmly within the daily life tradition. Pieter van der Heyden worked at a moment when the rivalry between Catholic Baroque drama and Protestant restraint reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.

The physical object — Engraving; first state of two, Sheet: 8 7/8 x 11 5/8 in. (22.6 x 29.5 cm) — carries its own history of handling and restoration. Pieter van der Heyden's brushwork here moves between exacting description and looser, more suggestive passages, a balance typical of Baroque studio practice.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Scenes like this were prized precisely because they made ordinary labor and leisure worth painting at all.

Today the painting is held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it remains a touchstone for understanding Pieter van der Heyden's contribution to Western art. It has been studied, copied, restored, and argued over for centuries — proof that great paintings keep generating new readings long after their creators have gone.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”