Portraits of men engaged in their profession were a relatively new thing. forcing Holbein to quit the court and look to the rising middle class for new clients.
They show us...
Art...
ArtSleuth
A superb Turkish carpet
Money
Finely worked gold
A picture by Hans Holbein
A young man of the Renaissance?
Indeed!
- and he seems to be putting his cards on the table.
Even his name, Georg Gisze,
appears several times in the picture
Below his personal motto:
“No joy without sorrow”
on this piece of paper stuck to the wall
and again on this letter
And yet, what a contrast between this show of wealth
and his disconcerted or appraising look,
which almost suggests we are invading his privacy.
And what a contrast between these precious, richly worked objects
and the rough wall of the cramped wooden box
in which he seems confined!
What is Holbein telling us about him
with all these knick-knacks ...
… and what is he hiding from us?
Episode 9 : Holbein - *Le Marchand Georg Gisze* *Le Monde mis en boîte*
Part 1. New Era, new Merchants
The thing that strikes us at once is the emphasis on correspondence:
Not only is Gisze shown
…in the act of opening a letter…
… but most of the objects have the same connotations:
The letters pinned on the wall,
The dispenser with string to fasten them securely
or the strips of parchment with their ready-for-use seals.
Holbein wants us to notice them,
and even distorts Gisze’s arm
to let us see them clearly.
Moreover, these letters are perfectly legible.
...that Gisze is a London-based merchant,
in constant touch with his family
and other merchants in northern Europe.
But although the picture identifies him as a merchant,
we have no way of knowing what he deals in!
Indeed, these massive keys are the only sign that he has - somewhere - …
…goods locked away in a warehouse.
The one thing Gisze really lets us see is his collection of official seals
the motif is reversed,
and will only show correctly when impressed on wax
and another, larger one is attached to a precious ball of amber.
The letters from other merchants
are signed with strange pictograms,
… and the seals themselves are everywhere.
So why this obsession with signatures?
The fact is, Gisze is one of a new breed of merchants.
Instead of hauling his wares from one European fair to the next,
He has an office in London,
at the Steelyard, where the German merchants congregate,
and where he represents his family,
one of the most powerful in Danzig…
a town belonging to the Hanseatic League, an association of merchant cities,
which dominates European trade.
Success for these great international merchants is a matter of being in the right place
to know, for example:
that the Baltic towns have a surplus of cheap fish ...
… which England needs to feed the countless workers
... who make the cloth
she must sell on the continent.
Gisze succeeds…
…because he knows about supply and demand …
… and how to put sellers and buyers under contract.
But these seals are also based on the runic alphabet,
and have talismanic value,
since a vital part of coming out on top in business is coming out on top when Fortune spins her wheel:
after all, the ship he loads with goods
may return from her voyage with huge profits …
but may also go down - and drag him with it!
This new way of doing business certainly offers him comfortable margins …
… but he must take risks to secure them.
Which is why he implicitly boasts on his walls
of having information which other men do not.
Is that why he gives us that cautious look?
Part 2. Time takes all
But who is he really looking at?
The picture gives us some clues:
the clearly visible message at the top, for instance, …
is aimed at us, the viewers …
… and tells us that this is indeed what Georg Gisze looked like, that these were his eyes and his cheeks
at the age of 34
-no longer so young for a bachelor,
the regulation status for members of the Steelyard.
And, as this pocket clock reminds us, time is passing:
The flowers beside it are not simply there to pretty up the picture.
Each has a definite meaning:
hyssop protects against the plague, and tells us that Gisze takes care of his health,
the carnation symbolises betrothal,
and the rosemary stands for fidelity.
So is the portrait a gift for his future wife?
Three years later, Gizse goes home and marries in Danzig:
quite possibly, he was already engaged when the portrait was painted.
X-ray examination has also shown
that Holbein repainted certain parts of the picture.
Originally:
the wall on the right, with all its paraphernalia, was not there,
and Gisze was looking to the right,
the side on which - since the earliest pictures of Adam and Eve
- wives had invariably been placed.
And so there are many reasons to believe that his portrait was meant to be one of a pair,
with his wife’s portrait in the traditional position on the right.
And yet Holbein retouched the canvas
and confined Gisze within a cramped and cluttered space.
And the fact that his eight other portraits of Steelyard merchants are rather different:
makes this even stranger
There are far fewer objects in this portrait of Dirk Tybis,
who seems bent on keeping himself to himself.
Wrapped in his voluminous coat, Herman Wedigh regards us calmly.
He is obviously sure of his own worth, and needs no props to prove it.
And Derich Born displays all the pride and arrogance of youth,
as he looks us straight in the eye, leaning on a balustrade
in a pose worthy of an Italian prince…
No other picture in the series is as big or as crowded as the Gisze - in short, as blatantly out to impress!
Why is Holbein so keen to dazzle us?
Part 3. You can’t take it with you!
Gisze’s portrait was the first in the series, and it has been suggested
that Holbein was playing the salesman
- and putting all his wares in the window!
But this isn’t the whole story.
Henry VIII has turned against Sir Thomas More, his patron -
forcing Holbein to quit the court and look to the rising middle class for new clients.
Portraits of men engaged in their profession were a relatively new thing.
Previously, portraits distinguishing a class were easy
noblemen never work, and a fine pair of gloves will label them instantly,
books for scholars,
and instruments for scientists.
Now these new-style merchants, with their new-made wealth,
also want the world to see the tools of their trade...
and be left in no doubt that they’ve made it.
But this display of wealth still raises one problem,
since some people may see Holbein’s Gisze as an example
- best avoided!
In fact, the Baltic merchants have a stern religious code
- and showing off like this may offend them.
Even religious artworks are being destroyed in some places by Protestants who think them too opulent
- and as such blasphemous
Which is why the Steelyard merchants want Holbein
to paint them a large fresco for their hall, whose subject, “The Triumph of Poverty”
almost implies that they are asking God’s pardon
…
for having their own portraits painted.
Both merchants and bankers also have a taste for pictures
…
which satirise their callings:
Holbein insists that, love money as we may,
death will still take it in the end!
This picture, too, uses caricature to convey the same message:
money-grubbing avarice
has permanently deformed the faces of these two grotesque bankers.
And the wife in this portrait
seems more interested in making sure that her banker husband gets his sums right
than in reading her prayerbook,
even though the man discreetly reflected in the mirror
is pointing to a steeple outside the window,
reminding her that eternal salvation is what matters
- and not this pair of scales, which is used to weigh gold.
A similar pair of scales turns up in Gisze’s portrait.
Is this a reference to the scales…
…on which souls are weighed at the last judgment?
If it is, Gisze’s soul may already have been weighed,
since one pan hangs far below the other!
We can decide for ourselves what this means for him
…
- but should always remember
that “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”.
ArtSleuth next episode : Bruegel – A Merchant looking down on peasants?
Find more about the series on: www.artsleuth.net
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Voice / English adaptation
Editing & Visual effects by
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Special Thanks – English subtitles : Vincent Nash
A CED Production