This essay deals with a minutiae, a small painting, The Step of the Styx, painted by Joachim Patinir, an artist who has left little work and of which we know almost nothing about his life. This painting can be interpreted as a particular 'document' of an era that allows weaving around it a 'micro-history' from which to study the activity of a group of artists, humanists, merchants and public figures, who share a particular moment interesting for the future of Europe, establishing relationships between a particular work and a general context that is reflected in it.