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The J. Pierpont Morgan Manor Museum uses paintings, books, and a coin set to read about the ubiquitous role of cash through the centuries.
By James Barron
This article is part of the special segment on Fine Arts and Exhibitions on the art world’s expanded vision of what art is and who can create it.
Is it ironic that the Morgan Library and Museum is opening an ambitious exhibition on the Middle Ages?
Maybe, maybe not. ” Adequate,” is the word used by Deirdre Jackson. She is the on-site curator of “Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality,” an exhibition that follows the rise of economic economics in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, long before J. Pierpont Morgan helped lay the foundations of economic economics. The economic infrastructure of modern America.
But the setting of “Medieval Money,” which opens Nov. 10, is appropriate. After all, Morgan, owner of the mansion now occupied by the museum, has amassed one of the finest collections of medieval manuscripts in North America. are at the center of the exhibit, and Dr. Jackson said he had no doubt that Morgan was well aware of what Renaissance bankers had accomplished.
“It’s not unreasonable to think he knew what they had done,” she said. A tapestry he owned, which had belonged to Henry VIII, called “The Triumph of Avarice”. Morgan hung it over a fireplace on the first floor. where it still stands.
Greed is just one of the themes evoked throughout the exhibition, which begins upstairs on the second floor. It examines how life, culture, and politics were redefined in medieval Europe. The sound of even seeped into the music: a 14th-century madrigal through Lorenzo Masini mimicked the jingle of coins.
And the themes that took root then are “more applicable than ever,” wrote Morgan director Colin B. Bailey, in the exhibition’s catalogue, “while others reflect on market fluctuations, wealth disparities, personal values, and morality. “
The exhibition gave the curators – Diane Wolfthal, professor emerita at Rice University, and Dr. Jackson – the opportunity to reconsider some of Morgan’s most treasured collections, adding illuminated manuscripts such as “The Hours of Henry VIII” and Claude de France’s Prayer Book.
“The appeal of cash is that it affects everything in society,” Dr. Jackson said. Poverty was prevalent in the Middle Ages, even when “most people, even the poor,” were trapped in the new money economy, Dr. Jackson said. Famines, which were not unusual in medieval Europe, “would have hit the other poorer people harder,” he said.
At the same time, the foundations of banks were being laid and new monetary tools were emerging that allowed other people to pay for goods without steel coins. “It’s much less difficult to have pieces of paper than it is to have large pieces of steel to fund your business transactions. ” said Dr. Jackson.
But coins were everywhere, and to show what was in medieval money boxes and brass alms-boxes, curators placed a bunch of coins as the first item visitors will see.
“Most museums will show you a horde of treasures,” Dr. Jackson said. “They have gold or silver coins that are attractive because of their shiny surface or superior value. “
The coins that salute “medieval money” are “low-value coins,” Dr. Jackson said.
“We’re turning the concept of hoarding on its head, and we’re doing this to show that low-value coins were minted in gigantic quantities. “Those currencies helped breathe life into the economy, he said, and “allowed more people to take part in exchange networks and make a profit, or lose the shirt. “
The “Medieval Mint” also has gold ducats, coins with photographs of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain minted in Castile in the late 15th or early 16th century. At the time, coins were nothing new: the oldest open-air coins mined in China were discovered in the ruins of a Greek temple in Lydia, in modern-day Turkey.
But as other people began to earn more cash in the Middle Ages, it was the spread of low-value coins that allowed more people (and more categories of people) to participate in the economy. Now there were bankers, money changers, pawn shops, and merchants who expanded beyond their immediate surroundings. The monetary centers attracted foreigners: Italian merchants who did business on the Beurse, or Stock Exchange, in Bruges lived in a network of expatriates in this Flemish city.
And as the new business economy developed, other people began to worry about the moral and religious consequences of enrichment, such as wealth that contradicted Christian ideals of poverty and charity.
In an e-book published to accompany the exhibition, Dr. Wolfthal writes that the investment bankers of the 14th and 15th centuries were “plagued by anxiety about some of their business practices. “He also noted that as early as the 16th century, Martin Luther declared that “commerce can be nothing but the robbery and robbery of the property of others. “
Still, the artists presented the money in incredibly realistic detail. Eight coins, painted in meticulous detail, shape the edge of a page in one of Morgan’s most prominent collections, “The Hours of Catherine of Cleves,” an illuminated 15th-century manuscript that Dr. Wolfthal and Dr. Jackson believed figured in the early history of capitalism and the crisis of values it unleashed.
In the middle of the page is St. Gregory. Dr. Wolfthal writes that location indicates the combination of faith and cash; the pieces may simply refer to the “very effective administrative formula of channeling donations to the church to the poor” that Gregory established as pope. But she says the pieces may also have been selected because they were part of Catherine’s daily life. Although Catherine was “separated and alienated” from her husband, her call appears on one of the coins.
Dr. Jackson was fascinated by the complexity of the edge and the way the pieces were painted, with shadows and wear and tear appearing from use.
“This was painted by an artist founded in the Netherlands, but he’s aware of coins coming from elsewhere,” Dr. Jackson said. “It shows how many coins were circulating in Europe.
But this is also the case with the artist of the “Hours of Catherine of Cleves”, known to scholars as the Master of Catherine of Cleves. “This man founded in Utrecht and portrays that border with those 25 photographs of coins from Denmark, Germany and Holland. “
Another page of “The Hours” shows a deathbed scene that, according to Dr. Wolfthal, emphasizes the futility of hoarding money, while also criticizing an heir’s greed.
This choice between the intelligent and the evil, between salvation and damnation, is the message of some other deathbed scene in “Medieval Money,” “Death and the Miser” via Hieronymus Bosch. It shows a dying man tempted to settle for a bag of money. There is also an angel pointing to a window with a crucifix.
Dr. Wolfthal wrote that Bosch first showed the dying man taking the devil’s bag. Bosch had doubts about this, “and instead represented a moment of indecision” on the part of the dying man, perhaps to prompt the audience to think about the possible choices they could make in their own lives.
“He’s thinking about that moment,” Dr. Jackson said. Part of its wealth in curtains. An angel is seeking to lure him for a spiritual revelation,” but he’s obviously divided.
There is no such ambivalence in a 16th-century Belgian portrait of St. Francis of Assisi, also depicted in “Medieval Money. “”He’s naked, in fancy clothes,” Dr. Jackson said. His father was a wealthy merchant. He is in the textile trade. Francis set out to pursue this career and he rejected it, he followed his own way of life, which consisted not only in seeking spiritual enlightenment for himself, but also in dedicating his life to the poor. “
“He makes a decision consciously,” she said. Unlike other people who are poor. “
James Barron is a journalist and columnist for Metro who writes the newsletter New York Today. In 2020 and 2021, he wrote the Coronavirus Update column, as part of a cover that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service. He is the author of two books and was the editor of the New York Times Book of New York. Learn more about James Barron
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