Customer Reviews

Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance

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If you sometimes feel that the modern age is spiritually bankrupt, what with all the conspicuous consumption and "keeping up with the Jones's" that goes on and if you yearn for earlier and simpler times- well, you might find this book a bit of a revelation. Ms. Jardine shows us that even back in the 15th and 16th centuries wealthy people wanted to acquire all the art, jewelry,books, etc. they could afford and when they got carried away even more than they could afford. Kings and princes would borrow beyond their means and die surrounded by opulence and debt. Collectors of beautiful objects would become so obsessive that they sometimes could not wait for other wealthy people to die so that they could get their hands on their collections too! People would even collect books as status symbols. A wealthy nobleman might retain a scholar to travel through Europe to buy the "right" books to add to his library. These would be in Latin and Greek. The fact that the nobleman might not be capable of reading the language in question wouldn't matter for the book would look good in his library. Ms. Jardine has an engaging style and the book is beautifully illustrated. My only complaints are that the section dealing with printing tends to give some obvious historical information which is not central to the books thesis and that as you near the end of the book you may feel that things are becoming a bit repetitious. But overall I found the book very enjoyable!

This is an absolutely beautiful book -- almost worth buying for the quality of the paper and print and the illustrations alone. But it's more than that. The initial chapters on the role of the Eastern Church in preserving Greek learning and its transmission to the West are fascinating and revealing. The overall theme -- that the engine of the Renaissance was acquisition, not some abstract desire for learning -- is less well played out, but nonetheless well worth pondering. A wonderful history in the Barbara Tuchman style: educated, provocative and highly readable

Lisa Jardine's book "Worldly Goods" is in itself a refreshing view of the Renaissance. The typically structure of the period is to lecture on the enlightement of thought, such Erasmus, or political change as seen with the republics established in the northern Italian cities. Mostly though the Renaissance is connected with the explosion of art. However, Jardine clearly shows that the concept of personal wealth through materialistic possesion is not something new and had a greater influence on the Renaissance period then many would have realized. Her writting style is also a strength of the book as I found it fairly easy to get through in a short period.

This is an impressive book about the economic underpinnings of Renaissance art, generously illustrated, and rich in examples to demonstrate the author's points.

The main theses of Lisa Jardine are that a "competitive urge to acquire was a precondition for the growth in production of lavishly expensive works of art" (12) and that "the seeds of our own exuberant multiculturalism and bravura consumerism were planted in the European Renaissance" (34).

Ms. Jardine argues convincingly that economics influence aesthetics. In the mid-fifteenth century the social rise of the merchant brought with it an aesthetic of expenditure, and "the art of Flanders like the art of Venice celebrated the triumph of worldly goods." (124) She describes at length the emergence of book manufacturing and trading in Europe, because "nowhere is the interrelatedness of cultural innovation and shrewd financial exploitation of a new market opportunity more strikingly illustrated than in the emerging book trade." (128)

One of the most interesting points she makes appears almost as a footnote. It is the fact that the conspicuous consumption of the European Renaissance is in imitation of the lavish splendor of the rulers of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. "Ostentation and authority went hand in hand; to be ostentatious was an important part of being considered a figure of civic worth." (72) To show one's wealth meant to show one's power. Pursuing this idea a bit further, one could argue that the initial spark for the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption in Renaissance Europe came - as so many other things - from the Muslim East.

The next question would be, how come this initial spark fired Europe's development but fizzled in the area where it came from? This is largely the story of how innovations are made and spread, and how the European 'newcomers' in the Renaissance caught up with and overtook their Muslim competitors (and models). For this story of comparative economic history, one has to look elsewhere, of course. It is not the focus of Lisa Jardine's book - which is not meant as a criticism.

However, there is one minor gripe I have with "Worldly Goods." The book is very good at arguing its case, but I felt a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of evidence supporting the book's rather uncontroversial, straightforward theses. For my taste, the main ideas of the book are not revolutionary or provocative enough to sustain the long narrative.

Overall, "Worldly Goods" is a successful hybrid of art history and economic history. Maybe art historians will grumble that the book does not paint the full picture of Renaissance Art (it does not), and economic historians will complain that it does not fully explain the mechanics of the rise of capitalism in Renaissance Europe (it does not). But there are other books for that. "Worldly Goods" delivers what it promises: a cogent and undogmatic study of the influence of economics on Renaissance art.

Ms. Jardine has written a very good book, her usage of historical annecdotes to portray the penetration of affluence during the Renaissance is well written and her stories are poignant.

What they are poignant about, however is up to the reader to decipher, as I felt the book could have used more direction in delivering the author's point about the penetration of wealth.

The book would have benefitted in more organization in the content level, perhaps being chronologically based.

Were Britisher Lisa Jardine resident on this side of the Pond, she would be familiar in our mouths as household words, celebrated in print and film and certified a MacArthurian genius. As it is, she is simply the author of stimulating, beautifully conceived and compiled, engagingly written works of revisionist history with a uniquely, appealingly literary twist. Worldly Goods looks at the Renaissance through its material traces and transactions, focusing on the immortal works of art, yes, but using them forensically as primary depictions of a burgeoning material culture that invariably gets lost in our customary focus on "humanism" and the great "humanists." And the artistic evidence Jardine considers includes jewelry, tapestries, books, maps, and the full range of opulent artifacts that, assembled in display, demonstrated the stature of the owner to his or her beholders.

In an imaginative preface, Jardine creates a powerful hook, taking the reader across the surface of Carlo Crivelli's lovely "Annunciation with St. Emidius," then diving deeply to a close analysis of the imagery. What Jardine calls attention to is not the prayerful Virgin with downcast eyes or the calling Archangel at the point of "Ave!" but to the contemporary urban Italian setting of the meeting. Here we are not, as you may think, on familiar ground - "Oh, I know - Leonardo gives his Annunciation a well-known, but anachronistic, Tuscan background because that's what the era's painters KNEW" - because Jardine's analytic eye is on the profusion of lovely objects that literally spills into the street from the marble- and terracotta-clad house in which Mary prays: rugs, vases, hanging tapestries, wall and ceiling paneling, finely tooled books, ornamental plants, a peacock. And among these objects are items contemporary viewers would have immediately recognized as the especially prized and precious products of international commerce: Ottoman rugs, Venetian glass, Spanish tapestry, English broadcloth, and more. This is a commerical civilization in capsule. We are carefully led to join Jardine in concluding that Crivelli, in addition to inspiring a numinous awe in the picture's viewers, almost certainly sought also to create a "frisson of desire at the lavishness of (the) surroundings," in the service of a wealthy patron whose munificence was therein on display.

The revelatory point, of course, is Jardine's suggestion that "the impulses which today we disparage as `consumerism' might occupy a respectable place in the characterization of the new Renaissance mind." She prosecutes this thesis with great vigor, imagination, and thoughtful interweaving of evidence from commercial, artistic, scientific, philosophic, and literary sources (which, sadly, receive NO documentation whatsoever except for a bibliography that does not seem comprehensive). The chapter titles tell much of the story - "Conditions for Change: Goods in Profusion," "The Price of Magnificence," "The Triumph of the Book," "New Expertise for Sale," "A Culture of Commodities" - although each is an absolutely brilliant essay that takes its thematic lead from the title but interweaves collateral evidence from diverse sources and field of endeavor.

We always knew the great merchant and banking houses were also the major patrons of the Raphaels, Michaelangelos, and Leonardos and that all the geniuses of artistic beauty worked for commissions. We understood less, however, how thoroughly commercial the era was, how its opulence functioned, and how the spread of learning and beauty was born on commercial wings, for profit, as a series of commercial transactions. In our own time we've debated endlessly the question "Can `commercial' also be `art'?" And we've taken this issue up with just as much heat when discussing any potential "sell-out," high or low, from Julian Schnabel to Green Day. But the answer to this great question, driven home again and again in Lisa Jardine's spectacular book, is "of course, dummy."

(In addition to the unfortunately lack of scholarly trappings, the book's other failing, which I note parenthetically, is the inclusion of illustrations that from time to time are too small to assist the reader in following Jardine's close visual analysis, an absolutely essential aspect of this work. On the other hand, from time to time, as in her wonderful analysis of Holbein's The Ambassadors, she includes the necessary color plates, plus numerous black and white details, that powerfully advance the analysis. Although beautifully produced, Worldly Goods would be even better in folio - something to hope for - with larger illustrations and many, many more color plates.)

Why not bring Professor Jardine to the US of A (the combined Florence, Venice, Rome, and Antwerp of our time) for a few years - which of our major research universities wouldn't like having her on its faculty for a spell? Or how if our own patron creates the position of "amazon.com fellow" at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton? - and drop a MacArthur on her (she needs to be working here for that to happen), simultaneously certifying her genius and deservedly enriching her. She'd understand perfectly.

As someone who has been teaching the history of the arts for many years, the Renaissance is often a frustrating period to teach. Most of the histories stress the "Great Men" approach, discussing the "genius" of Leonardo, Michaelangelo, et al, as though these dudes had been beamed into Italy from the planet Krypton. Lisa Jardine has finally anchored the artistic and humanistic achievements of the Renaissance in the believable realities of the rise of commodities trading, political gamesmanship, mutlicultural curiosity, and emerging market savvy, making the Renaissance sound remarkably like the present day. Jardine permits us to see Renaissance art in the same terms that the patrons who commissioned these works saw them, which is no small achievement. Her discussion of the relation between Luther's critique of the Pope and the rise of German business interests is quietly brilliant. On top of all this, the book is lusciously illustrated, a treat for the eye as well as the mind. If you think you just don't "get" the Renaissance, you need to read this book, for Jardine has provided us with insights not just into the past, but into how we think and act today.

Lisa Jardine shows us that the Renaissance featured just as much competition, consumerism, exploration, innovation, nationalism, and bigotry as our modern world, and concludes that our modern world was therefore made in the Renaissance. She makes the point repeatedly throughout this exhaustively researched history by demonstrating the fundamental and underlying role that commerce played in the major political, intellectual, and artistic developments of that period. In doing so, she fills a major gap in the accepted history of the Renaissance.

As a history student in college, I dutifully learned to parrot back the historical, political, and intellectual ramifications of the invention of the printing press, the wide-ranging mastery of Da Vinci, and the lifting of the ban on usury. But I didn't learn that the notion of a monopoly to reproduce a printed work, still inherent in modern-day copyright law, was largely a result of publishers' entreaties to ecclesiastical and secular authorities to grant them exclusive licenses to print specific works so that they be reasonably assured of a market large enough allow them to recoup substantial cost outlays for paper. While I knew that Leonardo da Vinci worked for patrons, I didn't realize the extent to which he was an adept freelance military engineer with a dedicated flair for self-promotion (his 1482 letter to the Duke of Milan reads like something out any modern networking how-to book) whose artistic talents, for which he is largely revered today, were viewed as a mere "bonus" attribute (perhaps this means people will appreciate me for my bass playing in 500 years instead of my career as a lawyer - one can only hope). And I certainly didn't imagine that the merchant lenders of the era were as expansive and creative as modern investment bankers in their outlook and dealings.

jeffbrownlegal@gmail.com

Although a good book with a valid and interesting point, the subtitle "A New History of the Renaissance" is too pretentious. Jardine convincingly argues that the astounding rebirth in the arts and in knowledge in general during the Renaissance was in god measure a byproduct of renewed trade, a commercial revival, and the lust for wealth and social recognition. Also very interesting is the demonstration that the artist as a solitary, bohemian genius who faces the world by expressing in his work his internal emotions, dates back only to the Romantic period. Before the late XVIII century, artists were basically employees or entrepreneurs eager to put their talents (oten as sublime as those of Michelangelo or Raffaello) at the service of the highest bidder or patron. It is a valuable book if only for the seldom-made link between the "new rich" and the progress of knowledge.

Jardine's Worldly Good is a well written and fairly interesting book but suffers from quite a few editorial and historical problems. Starting with the good stuff first Jardine does a good job covering the major points: early scholarly publishing, the desire for luxury goods and the influence of technology on the Renaissance world. It's all well written and pretty interesting to read about the powerful de' Medici built their own libraries. However, mere interesting stuff doesn't help with the not-so-good stuff.

First, the narrative is sort of sacrificed and all over the place. For example, the chapter called a "A Culture of Commodities" isn't really about culture or commodities. It mostly rehashes how explorers funded their voyages. Second, the book covers mostly only those very rich folks and at points it turns into more of an inventory of their possessions. (Reading these sections sound sort of like a NY Times article on all the fancy stuff Goldman Sachs bankers have and the commoners don't.) The last major issues I have are there are no footnotes.

Ultimately, this book is really of interest to the general reader who may not know a lot about the origins of the book trade or what the Doge's of Venice kept in their libraries. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed here it seems that the author sacrificed a lot of quality research opportunities for a bunch black and white photographs of paintings and books.