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A Prize of War: A Painting of Fifteenth Century Merchants
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Extract
There is in the city of Danzig on the Baltic Sea a medieval painting which is of unusual interest in the history of business. It is an altarpiece, the “Last Judgment” by Hans Memling, the inimitable fifteenth-century artist of the Low Countries. Besides being a great work of art, this picture is in a sense an important business record. It is, moreover, in a real way a product of business; its origin was intimately tied in with international mercantile activity in the fifteenth century. War prevented the “Last Judgment” from occupying the place for which it was intended, and wars have continued to give it an insecure existence. The present conflict in Europe may result in another removal, possibly back to Bruges, the place of the activity of those medieval business men whom it is said to commemorate.
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- Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1945
References
1 Memling was born in Germany, but he became a citizen of Bruges in Flanders on January 30, 1465. The poortersboeken, or citizenship lists, give his name as Jan van Mimnelinghe, “son of Hermann, born in Seligenstadt” (near Frankfurt am Main). See Parmentier, Remi A., editor, Indices op de Brugsche poortersboeken (Bruges, 1938), pp. xxxvi, 630.Google Scholar
2 This term was used for Germans from the Hanseatic cities: Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, Rostock, Danzig, etc.
3 Although life insurance was in its early stage of development and was still a gamble, marine insurance, since the risk could be computed with a fair degree of accuracy, was looked upori as a rather sound business proposition.
4 Three account books for business affairs of Bernardo di Giovanni Cambi are extant in the private collection of the late Prince Piero Ginori Conti of Florence. The last one, for the years 1470-90, contains the data relating to the Burgundian galleys. Some of the insurance was on the cargo, but at least one entry refers to insurance on the body and the freight collectible at destination (sopra corpo e nolo).
5 For example, in the fourteenth century, the Hansards expected the city of Bruges to be responsible for any money which they had entrusted to brokers and innkeepers who went bankrupt. No other merchants made such a demand. The city contended that it was responsible only for money on deposit with the money-changers, who were required to give surety. It suggested that the German merchants open accounts with the transfer banks operated by the money-changers, as other foreign merchants were doing, instead of entrusting their funds to innkeepers and brokers over whom the city had little or no control.
6 The Hanseatic League was originally an association of traveling merchants from certain North German cities. Gradually it changed into a political federation of cities. Although that change was not complete until the sixteenth century, it is customary to refer to the cities, and not just their merchants, as members of the Hansa in the fifteenth century. See Vogel, W., “La Hanse d'après des publications récentes,” Revue historique, vol. clxxix (1937), pp. 1–33Google Scholar.
7 Portinari estimated that the alum carried by the galley was worth about 40,000 gold florins and the other goods another 40,000 florins.
8 It is likely that Portinari started these proceedings in his own name, because the Medici had withdrawn entirely from their partnership with him in 1481. All contingent claims were apparently taken over by Portinari. Other claimants, e.g., shippers such as Tani and Sassetti, or underwriters such as Cambi, are not mentioned in the documents connected with the lawsuit.
9 On Portinari's financial difficulties, see de Roover, F. E., “Francesco Sassetti and the Downfall of the Medici Banking House,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, vol. xvii, no. 4 (Oct., 1943), p. 76.Google Scholar For the complete bibliography on this famous case of privateering, including the references to the documents published in the Hanserecesse, see von der Ropp, Goswin, “Zur Geschichte des Alaunhandels im 15. Jahrhundert,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter, vol. vi (1900), pp. 119–136Google Scholar; Otto Meltzing, “Tommaso Portinari und sein Konflikt mit der Hanse,” ibid., vol. xii (1906), pp. 101-123; Grunzweig, Armand, Correspondance de la filiale de Bruges des Medici, Part I (Brussels, 1931), pp. xxi ff. CfGoogle Scholar. Postan, M. M., “The Economic and Political Relations of England and the Hanse from 1400 to 1475,” in Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, edited by Power, Eileen and Postan, M. M. (New York, 1933), pp. 96 ff., 130 ffGoogle Scholar.
10 In the itemized account of the cargo which Portinari presented to the Grand Council of Malines in 1496 the altarpieces are valued at 870 gold florins: “deux tables d'aultez fort belles et riches en valeur de 870 florins d'or.” Hanserecesse von 1477-1530, vol. iii (Leipzig, 1888), No. 676, p. 504.Google Scholar
11 Warburg, A., who identified the donors by their coats-of-arms, gives their pictures in his article, “Flandrische Kunst und florentische Frührenaissance,” Gesammelte Schriften, vol. i (Leipzig, 1932), opp. p. 192.Google Scholar
12 The German inscription reads: Als das ewige Gericht des Kleinods Räuber ergriffen [war], Gab der gerechte Monarch uns das Erkämpfte zurück (“When the ‘Last Judgment’ was taken from the jewel's robbers, the just monarch [the king of Prussia] gave back to us that which had been violently seized.”)