In 1473 there was war between England (ruled by the Edward IV) and the federation of trading cities in Northern Germany that called itself the Hanseatic League (or the Hansa, for short). A galley set sail from Bruges, (now Brussels) for England on the first part of a voyage that had as its final destination Tuscany, in Italy. The ship flew the neutral flag of the Duke of Burgundy but was operating for the Medici family, carrying a varied cargo including gold, textiles, alum (then a fairly precious commodity) and two paintings. One of them was a fabulous three paneled (triptych) altarpiece of The Last Judgement painted by Hans Memling. This work was planned to be placed in a chapel in the hills above Florence and had been commissioned by Angelo Tani, the Medici manager of the Bruges branch. It would never reach its destination. The ship was boarded by privateers from Danzig (Gdańsk today, part of the League) led by Paul Beneke, captured and taken back to Danzig and the altarpiece remains to this day in St. Mary’s Church in Gdańsk (although Napoleon stole it for a while and so did Stalin). It also shows up in Gunther Grass’ novel, The Tin Drum.

Even a quick glance at the work invites comparison with Rogier van der Weyden’s Last Judgement in the Hospital at Beaune. In fact, it is largely based on it and that makes sense since Memling, born near Frankfort, Germany in 1430-ish, and seems to have trained with van der Weyden in Brussels and then settled there.

Same judgement, same semi-naked Christ, same St Michael (this time in armor) same proportion of saved to damned. No wonder the English referred to Last Judgement altarpieces as “Dooms”. There is one slight difference, though. Weyden’s scales weigh down on the side of damnation, Memling’s consider salvation to be weightier. This might be a minor point except for one thing, we know who the guy on the heaven side of the scale is and that is a tale in, and of, itself. In a lot of cases, identifying people in paintings is guesswork. Van Eyck’s painting of the man in the red turban is said to be a self-portrait (one of the very first self portraits) but there is no absolute proof. But with the man in the scale, the evidence is pretty overwhelming. This naked guy is an Italian banker named Tommaso Portinari and what a piece of work he was.

The basic biography is fairly straightforward. The Portinari family were an important Florentine banking family which included Beatrice Portinari who was the famous love and muse of Dante and his guide through Paradiso. The family suffered considerable misfortune in the constant ups and downs of early banking and Tommaso’s father became an early branch manager for the Medici bank. When he died in 1421, Tommaso and his brothers were orphaned and Cosimo de’ Medici took them in and raised them in his own household and then employed them in his banking empire. Tommaso was assigned to the Bruges branch and served as assistant manager there for many years. But Cosimo (a most shrewd judge of character) never trusted Tommaso and insisted that he never rise higher than assistant manager – although he never said why. When Cosimo died and the bank was inherited by, first, Cosimo’s son Piero the Gouty and then Piero’s son Lorenzo the Magnificent, this advice was soon forgotten. Piero was too ill perhaps, and Lorenzo was too busy being politically magnificent. In any case, Tommaso became manager, bankrupted the Branch and pissed everybody off before he died. Well, that’s the official story. The real story is even worse.

The downfall of late medieval and early modern baking was the folly of lending money to heads of state: kings and high nobles. These people had absolutely no sense of “enough” and felt no compunction about just walking away from large debts because after all they were “noble”. and you couldn't take them to court to get your money back. The Bardi and Peruzzi family banks in Florence were destroyed by this and one of the reasons for the long success of the Medici bank was a simple rule: no loans to rulers. Tommaso wanted to break this rule. Why? Because he wanted to be ‘important”. He wanted to be able to say: “The Duke owes me money; I will advise him, he’s my friend.” He was greedy and he had a huge ego that needed to be fed. This is what Cosimo saw and this is why Cosimo had him on a tight leash. When Cosimo died, Tomasso was unleashed.

At first, he did reasonably well. He invested in the Portuguese slave trade through his friend Bartholomeo Marchionni and the Berardi brothers, later friends of Columbus. Marchionni was to become the most important slave merchant of his time. Portinari helped fund the Burgundian desire to contribute to the Crusades by financing their purchase of some galleys to be sent as a naval support against the Turks. He made friends among the large ex-patriot Italian merchant community in Brussels like the Arnolfinis (who were painted by Van Eyck) and the Adornos. He began to mingle with the artists – he got married. Portinari was forty and his wife, Maria di Francesco Bandini-Baroncelli, was only fifteen. In the triptych painted by Hugo van der Goes, shortly after the marriage, the unhappy girl looks very uncomfortable wearing the monumental hennin (headdress) then in fashion among noble ladies at the courts of France and Burgundy. Although Portinari pretended not to be given to ostentation, he bedecked his wife as if she were a lady of high station. And he bought them both a palace – something considered very ostentatious in the Low Countries.

When Cosimo died, his son Piero was too ill to both run the bank and run Florence as his father had. He turned the running of the bank over to Francesco Sassetti who made a fatal mistake: he removed Cosimo’s rule against lending to heads of states and Tommaso was launched. He loaned more than the bank even owned to the new Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Rash. He over-extended the bank with loans to important people in ways that would make even American bankers blanch. He also decided that the public back home in Florence should see him as successful, heaven-bound and naked, so he got Hans Memling to use him as a model for the nude man who is saved in the Last Judgement and (very likely) got his wife to pose for the naked woman who looks adoringly at him. Then tried to send the picture to Florence. For the time it was an unheard-of gesture of …what? Egotism? Lunacy? The painting was actually commissioned by his former Tommasso’s boss Angelo Tani and Tani’s wife Catarina. But there’s Tommaso up with St. Michael. When the painting was stolen (and he tried through the courts to get it back) he commissioned another (now known as the Portinari altarpiece) that sits in the Uffizi today. He had himself painted twice more by Memling – once with his wife in 1479. Nothing odd about that. But his stint as a nude model is unprecedented. Then, he used the Medici bank to buy the two galleys from the Duke of Burgundy with money he did not have – and neither did they.

Then things began to get a little murky. The London branch of the Medici bank was going under through some bad loans. To hide this, Portinari and Sassetti agreed that the Bruges branch would assume the debts left by the liquidation of the London branch. Then the Burgundian galleys were lost, the first to the Danzig pirates, the second was wrecked in a storm. Then Charles the Bold defaulted on his debts in 1476, borrowed more and then got himself killed and the Burgundian monarchy nearly collapsed. It was saved by a marriage but it was revealed that an enormous fortune had been lost by the bank and the Bruges branch went under. As Lorenzo the Magnificent bitterly remarks in his memorandum, Portinari, “in order to court the Duke’s favor and make himself important, did not care whether it was at our expense.” While the bank was going down Portinari was still investing its non-existent money in slavery expeditions and lending MORE to the royal house of Burgundy. “These,” Lorenzo de’ Medici wrote with bitter irony, “are the great profits which are accruing to us through the management of Tommaso Portinari.’

It could be said, without too great a stretch of the truth, that Tommaso Portinari, the pious, naked man in the scales on his way to heaven was responsible for bringing down the Medici bank. But at least we know what he looked like.

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