Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality
The Morgan Library & Museum is pleased to present Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality. Opening November 10, 2023, and on view through March 10, 2024, the exhibition is the first to examine the economic revolution in medieval Europe and to chart the expanding role and perception of money during that period. Anchored around some of the Morgan’s most acclaimed medieval manuscripts, it critically recontextualizes items from the collection as well as other exceptional objects on loan through a decidedly new lens.
Goldbeater. Frontispiece from a register of creditors of a Bolognese lending society. Illuminated by Nicolò di Giacomo di Nascimbene, called Nicolò da Bologna Italy, Bologna, ca. 1394–95. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.1056, fol. 1v detail. Photography by Janny Chiu.
Medieval Europe witnessed an economic revolution: trade was conducted on an unprecedented scale, banks were established, and coin production surged. The expanding role of money in daily life sparked ethical and theological debates as individuals reflected on fluctuating markets, disparities in wealth, personal conduct, and morality. This installation brings together the Morgan’s illuminated manuscripts with paintings and other loans, including a brass alms box, a wealth of medieval coins, and a formidable strongbox, to reveal the complex ways people conceived of money during this time of rapid economic change.
Avarice. Book of Hours. Illuminated by Robinet Testard. France, Poitiers, ca. 1475. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, MS M.1001, fol. 91r. Photography by Janny Chiu.
Gamblers and Criminals. Hugo von Trimberg. Der Renner (The Runner). Austria, Tyrol, ca. 1476–99. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.763, fol. 131v. Photography by Janny Chiu.
The Prodigal Receives His Share. Germany, 1532. Colorless glass, vitreous paint, and silver stain The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of George Blumenthal, 1941, 41.190.442.
Merchant and King. Jacobus de Cessolis. Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium sive super ludo scacchorum (Book of the Customs of Men and the Duties of Nobles, or The Book of Chess), in French Translated by Jean de Vignay. France, probably Paris, 1350–60. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS G.52, fol. 33v detail. Gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection, 1984. Photography by Janny Chiu.
Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality dramatizes a struggle that followed the rise of capitalism in the Middle Ages: Would you rather have your money or your eternal life? Hieronymus Bosch’s famous painting Death and the Miser, which opens the exhibition, shows a man confronting this very question on his deathbed, as a demon offers him a money bag while an angel urges him to turn to God. The display reveals the tension between material gain and spiritual fulfillment, between the desire to succeed in business and accumulate wealth and Christian ideals of poverty and charity.
Coins from the Chalkis hoard. Greece, Chalkis, Greece, late fourteenth century Courtesy of American Numismatic Society, New York, 1985.58 / Gift of Jonathan P. Rosen. Photography Alan Roche.
Hieronymus Bosch. Death and the Miser, ca. 1485–90. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel Kress Collection, 1952.5.33.
Fra Angelico, St. Anthony Shunning the Mass of Gold, tempera on panel, Italy, Florence, ca. 1435–40. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 44.550 / The Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection / Bridgeman Images.
Hans Memling, Portrait of a Man with a Pink Oil on panel. Netherlandish, ca. 1475. The Morgan Library & Museum, AZ073. Photography by Graham S. Haber.
In another section, the exhibition explores the question, “Will money damn your soul?” For medieval Christians, avarice—the desire for material things—was a deadly sin. With the rise of commerce, investment, and banking, many began to interpret avarice more narrowly as the lust for money. This section foregrounds medieval perspectives on immoral ways of acquiring and spending money, concerns that find ready parallels in contemporary life. While numerous debates centered on usury, the practice of lending money at interest, swindlers, robbers, embezzlers, tricksters, and gamblers were condemned by secular and ecclesiastical authorities alike.
Master of Catherine of Cleves, St. Gregory the Great and Coins, from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, The Netherlands, Utrecht, ca. 1440. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.917/945, p 240. Photography by Janny Chiu.
Triumph of Avarice. Willem de Pannemaker. ca. 1534-1536. Wool, silk, and gilt-metal wrapped thread. 12 x 24 feet (4.43 x 15 m). Bequest of J.P. Morgan, Jr., 1943. AZ130 © The Morgan Library & Museum, Photography by Graham S. Haber, 2016.
Deathbed and Souls Tormented in Purgatory. “The Hours of Catherine of Cleves” Illuminated by the Master of Catherine of Cleves. The Netherlands, Utrecht, ca. 1440. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, MS M.917/945, p. 180–fol. 97r. Purchased on the Belle da Costa Greene Fund and through the generosity of the Fellows, 1963 and 1970. Photography by Janny Chiu.
Hans Holbein the Younger. Der Rychman (The Rich Man), from Dance of Death. Woodcut executed by Hans Lützelburger Germany, designed 1523–26, published 1538. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection, 1948.11.128.
Conversely, the exhibition examines the potential of money, highlighting moral responses to it, as well as societal transformations brought about by the new culture of commerce. Medieval Christians did not reductively condemn money; rather, they saw how it could be channeled to support religious initiatives and to help the less privileged. The installation tracks the rise of the new mercantile class, as shown in the Morgan’s Portrait of a Man with a Pink by Hans Memling, which likely depicts a young Italian merchant. With the rise of commerce and the invention of financial instruments came changes in social and economic mobility, as the accumulation of wealth became possible for those who were not born into it.
Strongbox. Steel, Germany, possibly Nuremberg, late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. 35 3/4 × 51 in., 768 lb. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1890, 90.13.1/ Gift of Henry G. Marquand.
The Hungarian Master and workshop, Judas Attempts to Return the Silver and Judas Hanged, from the “Hungarian Anjou Legendary” Italy, Bologna (or Hungary), ca. 1325–35. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.360.8 detail. Photography by Janny Chiu.
Andrea di Bartolo, Joachim and Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the Temple. Oil on poplar, Italy, Siena, ca. 1400–1405. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.43.
Jan Gossart, Portrait of a Merchant, oil on oak, Netherlandish, ca. 1530. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1967.4.1.
Additional highlights of the exhibition include a steel strongbox borrowed from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with an elaborate locking mechanism consisting of nine bolts and various leaf-shaped shields. Also on view are two volumes of the Morgan’s extraordinary “Hours of Catherine of Cleves,” illuminated by the Master of Catherine of Cleves. One volume is open to an image of St. Gregory framed by an unusual border of gold and silver coins. Several of the medieval coins depicted in the miniature, or their close equivalents, will be displayed alongside the manuscript, thanks to the generosity of the American Numismatic Society.
Eight of Coins, King of Coins, and Ten of Coins. Playing Cards. Illuminated by Bonifacio Bembo Italy, Milan, ca. 1450–80. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.630, nos. 20, 32, 33. Photography by Graham S. Haber.
Albrecht Dürer, The Prodigal Son amid Swine, engraving, Germany, Nuremberg, ca. 1496. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 19.73.35. The Metropolitan Museum of New York, Fletcher Fund, 1919.
Boxed balance with weights. Germany, Cologne, 1699. Produced by Berndt Odental (weights) and Jacob Heuscher (balance). Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society, New York, 1930.179.1-24. Photography by Alan Roche.
Colin B. Bailey, Director of the Morgan Library & Museum, said “The Morgan is very pleased to present this comprehensive, interdisciplinary exhibition that draws on years of research on a topic that is rarely addressed for a general public. It continues a now well-established tradition at the Morgan of organizing ambitious medieval projects that reflect the strength of our holdings and our commitment to making the latest scholarship available to as wide an audience as possible.”
This exhibition is curated by Diane Wolfthal, David and Caroline Minter Chair Emerita in the Humanities and Professor Emerita of Art History at Rice University, with Deirdre Jackson, Assistant Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum. It is accompanied by a groundbreaking new publication of the same name, which includes new essays by Steven A. Epstein and David Yoon.
