Banks In Addition To The Renaissance: The Benefits Of Early On Money-Laundering

Originally posted Oct 23, 2011:
From The Economist:

RENAISSANCE-era Florence is remembered non for its bankers merely for its beauty. Yet the metropolis is straight off hosting a fantabulous exhibition that reaffirms the of import link betwixt the two. High finance non solely funded high art, merely its money together with drive helped to fuel the humanist ideals that inspired the Renaissance. This show, curated past times Tim Parks, a British author based inwards Italy, together with Ludovica Sebregondi, an Italian fine art historian, considers the influence of 15th-century financiers on Italian fine art together with culture.

“Money together with Beauty” is divided into 2 parts: how money was made, together with how it was spent. The gilded florin, outset minted inwards 1252 (and equal to $150 today), made the Florentine commonwealth the pump of a nascent banking organization that stretched from London to Constantinople. The Medici banking concern was supreme for close a century, till its collapse inwards 1494 when the household unit of measurement was ousted from political power. This show, on persuasion inwards the Strozzi palace (built inwards 1489 past times a competition banking family), every bit good traces the humbler fortunes of Francesco di Marco Datini, the “merchant of Prato”, using the vast archive he left behind. To recreate the daily activities of these bankers every bit good every bit their Blue Planet view, the exhibition includes paintings together with mercantile paraphernalia, from weighty ledgers to nautical maps.

The Church deemed it sinful to accuse involvement on loans, viewing it every bit lucre without labour. This gave rising to artful together with elaborate ways to disguise such profit-making, including unusual currency deals together with triangular trading. The difference of moral together with commercial values tin ship away endure seen inwards roughly Flemish paintings included here, such every bit Marinus van Reyerswaele’s “The Money Changer together with his Wife”, inwards which a duo fixates on their coins land their candle is snuffed out (pictured)....

...MORE