A Triptych by Van der Goes or a Feast for Dr Kissinger?
PAUL JOHNSON
Successful businessmen who try to rise socially too far and too fast are sure to come a cropper. This has been true of all ages but never more so than at present. The case of Conrad Black is typical. The other day I came across a letter he wrote to me in 1985, saying he was coming to London, was new to the scene and wanted my advice. I gave him my advice on this and other occasions. He never took it, if unpalatable. Once, when he was still little known, we were both sitting at lunch in the dining room at Beaufort Castle, with its spectacular view over the Beauly River. I said, 'Conrad. now you own a national newspaper, you are sure to be offered a peerage sooner or later. Turn it down.' I did not say, 'It is sure to go to your head', but that is what I meant, having seen titles destroy titans of the media before. He replied, 'Don't wag your bony Jesuitical finger at me, Paul,' Me: 'I gather from your reply that you are already in that market so I leave you to your fate.' Our host, Simon Fraser, laughed at this and so, to do him justice, did Conrad, Those were the glory days for him before the shadows began to lengthen — he was meeting kings and presidents and relishing every minute of it.
Oddly enough, experienced mediaeval businessmen already had a saying for this process of hubris. In 1399 the head of the Orlandini family of bankers, long established in Bruges, then one of the commercial capitals of Europe, laid it down: 'Nobody ever deals with great lords without eventually losing his feathers.' That was a lesson which was not learned by Tommaso Portinari, scion of a Florentine banking family, who joined the Medici branch in Bruges at the age of 12 as a garzone (office boy). A quarter of a century later, after much industry, pushing and self-promotion on his part. Portinari (at his own insistent request) was made manager of the Bruges branch and a partner in the whole business. In due course he dealt on a large scale with great lords, becoming an official counsellor to the Duke of Burgundy and his chief financial adviser. He figured prominently at court ceremonies, weddings and the like, dressed as a counsellor in crimson satin and described as capo of the Florentine nazione. In 1473 he was absent from his duties for several months at the summit meeting held, with great extravagance, in Trier between Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and the Emperor Frederick III. He also spent hugely, on his own account, and lent heavily from the bank's funds. As Lorenzo de' Medici later observed, 'in order to court the Duke's favour and make himself important, [Portinari] did not care whether it was at our expense'. The debacle began in 1480 when Lorenzo closed down the Bruges branch, and Portinari found himself obliged to set up on his own, shouldering the debts he had acquired. His feathers were already ruffled and they were finally lost when his business was taken over by a more prudent family, the Gualterotti. Portinari returned dejected to Florence in 1497 and died four years later. I have been studying this cautionary tale in the pages of a fascinating and superbly illustrated new book, From Flanders to Florence (Yale, 140), in which Dr Paula Nuttall examines the interplay between Netherlandish and Italian art in the 15th century, promoted by bankers.
However, as Dr Nuttall shows, though bankers might be undone by this social climbing and folie de grandeur, the results were often positive in terms of the great artists they patronised and the magnificent works they purchased — works which we can still enjoy today. Portinari's older and much hated rival in the Bruges branch of the Medici bank, who preceded him as manager there, was Angelo Tassi. As a senior executive at the bank, he was allowed to acquire a family chapel in the church of the Badia, which Cosimo de' Medici had founded at Fiesole. This great honour came at a price, for Tassi was obliged to decorate it in a fitting manner. Before that he was sent to London on an emergency mission by his Medici bosses to rescue their branch there from bankruptcy. Having done this, and returning in expansive mood via the Low Countries in 1469, his attention was drawn to the brilliant young artist Hans Memling, then beginning his career. Tassi liked his work and promptly commissioned him to do his first large-scale altarpiece, to dominate the Tassi chapel at Fiesole. The result was 'The Last Judgment' (1469-73).
This spectacular work, with St Michael fighting the Devil in the centre panel (the Tassi chapel is dedicated to the archangel), Hell on the right, Heaven on the left, and superb full-length kneeling portraits of Tassi and his wife Caterina on the reverse of the wing panels, is now in the Narodowe Museum, Gdansk (Danzig). How come? Why not in Tuscany whence it was intended? Because in 1473 the Burgundian galley San Matteo, voyaging from Flanders to Italy with the newly completed altarpiece on board, was captured by the Danzig privateer Paul Beneke, who lugged it back to his home town and put it in the church of St Mary. The Medici, the Duke of Burgundy and the Pope all made desperate efforts to secure its return, rather like Western governments trying to secure the release of hostages from Islamic terrorists. But the Poles would not budge and kept their loot.
No doubt Tommaso Portinari, who to be fair made valiant efforts to get the galley back — the Bruges branch of the bank owned it — laughed at the discomfiture of his rival Tassi, whose efforts to cut a bella figura in the Fiesole church had come to nothing. But he had already decided to trump Tassi's ace by himself commissioning a leading Flemish artist, Hugo van der Goes, to paint a triptych for his chapel. This is the 'Adoration of the Shepherds', a highly competitive piece of magnificence, commissioned in 1473 when Tassi's was completed and clearly designed to outdo it. Now known as the Portinari triptych, it is, when fully opened, nearly six metres wide, double that of Tassi's, and the largest early Netherlandish triptych to survive. It got safely to Florence, too, which is why it is now one of the great treasures of the Uffizi. It took 16 porters to carry it across the town.
Portinari, despite his business difficulties brought on by hubris, continued to spend his cash on Flemish art. He got Memling to paint a 'Passion of Christ' (now in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin) and a small devotional 'Virgin and Child', with half-lengths of himself and his wife Maria on the wing panels. The 'Virgin and Child' is lost, but the portraits have somehow survived and are now in the New York Met. They are among the finest things done by Memling or any other Flemish artist, and magnificently reproduced, full page, in Dr Nuttall's book. No hint of hubris in Tommaso's prayerful face, and no touch of feminine extravagance in Maria's holy features (though her necklace must have cost a packet). Would that Conrad and Barbara Black could have been immortalised in such style! Unfortunately no such master as Memling exists today — the imagination boggles at the splodge old Lucian would have made of such tempting sitters. Tommaso's patronage, especially the big Portinari triptych, had an immense impact on Florentine artists, as Dr Nuttall's book delightfully shows. Today, alas, financial hubris has no such benevolent cultural consequences. We are left with the bills for Conrad's jets. Barbara's handbag and the three colossal dinners given to Dr Kissinger.
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