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Gold and Images

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Margaret Aston
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Extract

In a letter of December 1523 describing his troubles with Julius II in the previous decade, Michelangelo related how the Pope had commissioned him to paint the twelve Apostles in the lunettes of the Sistine Chapel. Soon after starting his design the artist became convinced that the project was off to a bad start. ‘I told the pope that if the Apostles alone were put there it seemed to me that it would turn out a poor affair. He asked me why. I said, “because they themselves were poor”.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 24: The Church and Wealth , 1987 , pp. 189 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987

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References

1 The Letters of Michelangelo, ed. and tr. E. H. Ramsden (London, 1963) 1, pp. 148–9. According to Vasari Michelangelo himself had intended, but for a final rush, to add some gold and ultramarine to enrich the draperies, and when the Pope afterwards complained about this lack told him that such holy men would have ‘despised riches and ornament’. G. Vasari, Lives of the most eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, ed. J. P. Richter (London, 1850–85), 5, p. 258.

2 Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures, ed. and tr. E. Panofsky, 2nd edn by G. Panofsky-Soergel (Princeton, 1979), pp. 46–9, 62–7, 193.

3 Alberti, L. B., On Painting, tr. Spencer, J. R. (London, 1956), p. 85 Google Scholar. But Alberti was not against putting paintings in settings ornamented with gold and gems.

4 L’Or au Temps de la Renaissance du mythe à l’économie, ed. M. T. Jones-Davies (Paris, 1978), p. 27; for an example of 1495 see A Documentary History of Art, ed. E. G. Holt (Princeton, 1947 [Anchor Books edn, 1957–8]) 1, pp. 268–70.

5 L’Or au moyen äge (Publications du CUER University of Provence, 1983), p. 9; L’Or au Temps de la Renaissance, pp. 1–2, 27–30, 86. On avarice see Murray, A., Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1985), pp. 59–80 Google Scholar.

6 Granan, I Dist. 86, c.18 (cols 301–2); compare PL 16, col. 133 for Ambrose, De officiis ministrorum libri tres, lib. ii, cap. 21, nos 110–11.

7 Abbot Suger on St.-Denis, pp. 76–7, 217; Murray, Reason and Society, p. 71.

8 Sumption, J., Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion (London, 1975), p. 156 Google Scholar; Stow’s Survey of London, ed. H. B. Wheadey (Everyman edn, 1956), pp. 82–3, cites examples of bishops selling plate in times of famine, including Walter Suffield, Bishop of Norwich (d. 1257), whose action is recorded by Matthew Paris.

9 Sumption, Pilgrimage, pp. 52, 156, and Plate 1; Liber Miraculorum Sánete Fidis, ed. A. Bouillet (Paris, 1897), pp. 9–10; The Life of Christina of Markyate, ed. C. H. Talbot (Oxford, 1959), pp. 186–7; Reginaldi Monachi Dunelmensis Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthherti Virtutibus, SS (1835), p. 140.

10 La religion populaire en Languedoc au XIIIe siècle à la moitié de XIVe siècle, ed. E. Privat (Toulouse, 1976), p. 234.

11 An Illustrated Yorkshire Carthusian Religious Miscellany, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana, 95 (1981), 3, p. 34; BL Add MS 37049, fol. 27r. I am grateful to Milla Riggio for this reference.

12 Liber Miraculorum Sancte Fidis, pp. 46–7. On this statue and Bernard’s reactions see J. and M-C. Hubert, ‘Piété chrétienne ou paganisme? Les statues-reliquaires de l’Europe carolingienne’. Settimane di Studio dei Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 28 (1982), 1, pp. 235–75 (for which reference I thank Judith Herrin).

13 PL 182, cols 914–15 from Bernard’s Apologia to William, Abbot of St. Thierry, cited Documentary History, ed. Holt, I, pp. 19–20.

14 Ibid.; Aston, M., Lollards and Reformers (London, 1984), p. 150 Google Scholar; The Colloquies of Erasmus, ed. C. R. Thompson (Chicago, 1965), pp. 306–7. Such charity might go astray (in the eyes of strict reformers). Compare Pater, C A., Karlstadt as the Father of the Baptist Movements: The Emergence of Lay Protestantism (Toronto, 1984)Google Scholar for Melchior Hoffmann’s public humiliation of two women who had given the value of a golden chalice to the poor, but had the vessel made into gold chains for themselves.

15 PL 182, col. 915; Documentary History, ed. Holt, 1, p. 20.

16 The Work of William Tyndale, ed. G. E. Duffield (Appleford, 1964), p. 74, from the prologue to the Book of Numbers.

17 Oeuvres Completes de Eustache Deschamps, ed. le Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire and G. Reynaud (Paris, 1878–1903), 8, pp. 201–3; Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay (Oxford, 1899–1902), 4, p. 99; G. A. Benrath, Wyclifs Bibelkommentar (Berlin, 1966), pp. 35–6, 338.

18 Gabrielis Biel Canonis Missa Expositio, ed. H. A. Oberman and W. J. Courtenay (Wiesbaden, 1963–76), 2, pp. 267–8.

19 Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. A. Hudson (Cambridge, 1978), p. 84.

20 Calvin, John, Commentaries on the Last Four Books of Moses, arranged in the Form of a Harmony, ed. Bingham, C. W. (Edinburgh, 1853), 2, p. 116 Google Scholar; MosisLibri V, cum Iohannis Calvini Commentariis (Geneva, 1563), p. 208 (on Exodus 34.17, in the exposition of the Second Commandment). By contrast with the Old Testament, there are only 21 references to gold/golden in the New.

21 Calvin, ibid.; Huldreich Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke, ed. E. Egli et al. (Corpus Reformatorum, 1905.), 2, pp. 654, 814; Garside, C., Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven and London, 1966), pp. 146–60 Google Scholar.

22 Aston, Lollards and Reformers, p. 162, n. 93; An Apology for Lollard Doctrines, ed. J. H. Todd, CSer. 20 (1842), pp. 85–6.

23 Moxey, K. P. F., Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer, and the Rise of Secular Painting in the Context of the Reformation (New York and London, 1977), pp. 144–6 Google Scholar.

24 An epistle of the prophete Hieremie (Southwark, John Redman for Robert Redman [1539?]) STC 2792, colophon and prefatory address.

25 Certain Sermons or Homilies appointed to be read in Churches (Oxford, 1844), pp. 165, 234–5. ‘Great puppets’ derives from Lactantius, citing Seneca (grandes pupas); compare Persius, Satire II, 70.

26 Abbot Suger on St.-Denis, p. 55; The Register of John Chandler Dean of Salisbury, ed. T. C.B. Timmins, Wilts.Rec.Soc, 39(1984), 151; The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, 4th edn rev. J. Pratt (London, 1977), 4, p. 648 and Appendix VI (Reg. Tunstall fol. 134). Compare Baruch 6.10–11. At Seville in Holy Week women still lend necklaces and jewellery to adorn the Virgins of the pasos that are paraded round the city. Dr Eamon Duffy remembers women giving rings to make a crown for a new statue of the Virgin, made for the Marian year of 1954 at Dundalk. Reformers might have linked such actions with one of their prototype idols: the golden calf, made out of earrings given by the people: Exodus 3 2.2–4, annotated in the Geneva Bible, ‘Such is the rage of Idolaters, that they spare no cost to satisfy their wicked desires’.

27 Acts and Monuments, 4, pp. 620–1, 627, 648; compare p. 582 for a critical reaction to newly gilded images c.1520, and 5, Appendix VI (Reg. Tunstall fols 137–8) for Thomas Garrett (Garrard)’s condemnation of gilding images.

28 Ozment, S. E., The Reformation in the Cities (New Haven and London, 1975), p. 102 Google Scholar (that is, keeping close to the prohibition of graven images).

29 Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, pp. 198–9; see also pp. 218–19 for the concern for simple unostentatious sculpture and paintings of the Virgin and saints expressed by the Catholic François Richardot in a sermon of 1567.

30 Baxandall, M., The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven and London, 1980), pp. 18, 42, 48, 62, 172–80, 186–90, 261–2 Google Scholar. The Münnerstadt altarpiece was painted and gilded ten years later, perhaps suggestive of some contemporaries’ dislike of the new style.

31 Colloquies of Erasmus, pp. 288–9, from Peregrinatio religionis ergo (1526).

32 L’Or au Temps de la Renaissance, pp. 28, 30; Slackes, L.J., Vermeer and His Contemporaries (New York, 1981), pp. 55–6 Google Scholar; Gowing, L., Vermeer (London, 1952), pp. 135–6 Google Scholar; Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Cenre Painting (Exhibition Catalogue, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984), pp. 342–3. For reproduction see the frontispiece to this volume.

33 A Catechism set forth by Thomas Cranmer, ed. D. G. Selwyn (Appleford, 1978), text, p. 7; Hollstein, F. W. H., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts c.1450–1700 (Amsterdam, 1949) 8, p. 246 Google Scholar (for die Heemskerck print, also illustrating the decalogue); Kirschenbaum, B. D., The Religious and Historical Paintings of Jan Steen (Oxford, 1977), pp. 71–3, 216 Google Scholar; Réau, L., Iconographie de I Art Chrétien (Paris, 1955-9), 2, pp. 205–6 Google Scholar.