The Marriage Balance, plate 2 from the Series of Six Proverbs, after Karel van Mander

As humanism advanced in Europe, the idea that companionship was an important aspect of marriage spread. In the Marriage Balance, Karl van Mander reacts to this novel idea by insisting on the "traditional" function of marriage, which was economic. The inscription at the bottom reads, "Neither love nor virtue, but only a dowry weighed out fairly in the scales makes a stable marriage . . ." The fact that this image was printed in several states by different publishers and with translations from the Latin into Dutch and English suggests that the principle it illustrates held wide currency.