Jerome Frescobaldi

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Jerome or Girolamo Frescobaldi (floruit 1470–1525) was an Italian financier and textile merchant in Bruges and at the Scottish court.

Career[]

Jerome, Jeronimus, or Hieronymus (Italian: Girolamo) Frescobaldi was a member of the internationally successful Florentine Frescobaldi family. He was described as a "Lombard" in Scotland.[1] Frescobaldi and his business partners in Bruges, the Gualterotti family, sponsored the voyage of Giovanni da Empoli from Lisbon to the Malabar Coast of India in 1503 and 1504, intending that he would be their agent in Calicut for the spice trade.[2] Jerome seems to have mostly lived in Bruges, and established a trading house in Antwerp in 1507.

Frescobaldi worked for James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor, and his name appears frequently in the published exchequer records and the manuscript household account. Frescobaldi arranged credit for Scottish clergy travelling in Europe, and was the factor for the foreign debts of Archbishop of St Andrews.[3] He supplied fine textiles for costume, furnishing, and table linen. He was involved in imports from Bruges with a Scottish merchant and courtier, James Merchamestoun. Another Scottish merchant buying in Flanders for the king at this time was James Hommyll, who imported tapestries, and hosted a group of Africans apparently including Ellen More for the king in his house on Edinburgh's High Street.[4][5][6]

Embroidered coat of arms of James IV at Stirling Castle (modern reproduction)

In May 1503 his factor Julian Laci, also called "Julian the Lombard",[7] was paid for purchases made in Flanders, including ermine fur for the collar of the king's gown, five chairs of estate or thrones upholstered in cloth of gold, velvet for another four chairs, and ironwork for the chairs, and 16 gilded pewter balls for the chairs.[8] The chairs were made in Bruges and taken to Middelburg for shipping.[9] Julian Laci also appears in the exchequer rolls, exempted from the export custom duty of Melrose wool.[10]

Frescobaldi and Julian Laci were not always resident in Scotland, and a note in the royal accounts from 1504 mentions that the court embroiderer Nannik had used drawn gold thread sent by Frescobaldi to embroider a chasuble but there was no-one to ask the price.[11]

His sons Filippo and Leonard Frescobaldi conducted similar business at the English court from 1511, where there were several other Italian merchants in residence. In 1516 Leonard Frescobaldi was given an annuity or pension by Henry VIII as a vendor of cloth of gold and silver, and he was made an usher of the king's chamber.[12] Leonard had stood as a guarantor for Pietro Torrigiano when he was contracted to make the tomb of Margaret Beaufort in November 1511.[13] A Netherlandish artist involved in the tomb project, Meynnart Wewyck had been in Scotland in 1502 and 1503 painting portraits.[14] Leonard Frescobaldi supplied damask gold thread to the king's embroiderer John Milner. He also supplied guns and military equipment to Henry VIII, including halberds, axes and handguns, 4,500 suits of armour, cables for the king's ships, and suite of twelve cannnons called the "Twelve Apostles". Some of this weaponry made have been used in France and against Scotland at the battle of Flodden.[15]

From 1505 to 1507 Jerome Frescobaldi organised a series of purchases for James IV from a sum of Flemish money, spent in Flanders, probably in Bruges. This included a stick or length of cloth of gold, hanks of gold wire or thread, money for the purchase of great horses, books of gold leaf for illuminating manuscripts and charters, live quails and pheasants. He gave money to the king's envoys, the Carrick Pursuivant and Lyon Herald, and arranged for 1,000 gold ducats to be available in Venice for the king's son, Alexander Stewart, Archbishop of St Andrews. He arranged the payment for the Papal bulls to appoint the Archdeacon of Aberdeen.[16]

The cloth of gold was used to make a coat for James IV and the remaining 11 ells were given to Margaret Tudor. The gold fabric was used with expensive velvet to make an important gown in March 1507. The historian Michelle Beer argues that this gown was made for Margaret's "churching" after her first pregnancy, a ceremony which marked her return to full participation in court life.[17] Some of the gold wire was sent to Margaret Tudor while she was away on a pilgrimage to Whithorn in June 1507.[18]

The artist Ambrosius Benson was appointed to manage the affairs of Frescobaldi's daughter, Jennette

Frescobaldi was accused of a grave charge by Pope Julius II, and James IV wrote to the Pope in his favour in February 1508, mentioning that Frescobaldi had been involved in the alum trade (essential in tanning and in cloth-dyeing as a mordant), and Philip I of Castile had pressured him to import alum so that he broke a monopoly. James IV wrote to Louis XII of France hoping that he would intervene in support of Frescobaldi.[19]

In 1508 he sent more sticks of cloth of gold and arranged for the mending of some of the royal tapestries that had been burnt in a fire. The fire also damaged some of Margaret Tudor's clothes.[20]

He contributed to the cost of tackle and rigging for a ship bought in Flanders. Some of the "say" fabric he sent to Scotland was used by the king's tailor Thomas Edgar to make streamers or pennants for the king's ships, including the Margaret.[21]

Colours for painting sent from Flanders in 1508 cost the relatively large sum of £31 Scots.[22] They may have been for a painter called "Piers" in the accounts, who has been tentatively identified as Peerken Bovelant, an apprentice of an Antwerp painter Goswijn van der Weyden.[23] Piers was brought to Scotland in September 1505 by Andrew Halyburton, the trading agent or "Conservator of Scottish Privileges" in Middelburg. No details are known of his work, except his assistance in painting costumes and heraldry for tournaments including the Wild Knight and the Black Lady. Piers cut out letters or ciphers to decorate the bards of the king's horses from velvet and the cloth of gold supplied by Frescobaldi.[24] The king gave him a salary and accommodation, and it is likely that Piers made portraits for the court. A portrait of James IV wearing a collar of St George from 1507 survives at Abbotsford.[25] Piers returned to Flanders from Inverkeithing in July 1508.[26]

Other Italians at the Scottish court at this time included a stone mason called Cressent and a priest and alchemist John Damian. James IV gave a licence to a Florentine merchant "Lactente" Altoviti to trade in Scotland in March 1513.[27]

In 1513, the Bishop of Caithness, who managed the royal households and fishings, sent Frescobaldi barrels of salmon which were exempted from custom duty.[28]

In May 1525 members of the Frescobaldi family in Bruges chose a lawyer or procurator to go to Scotland to pursue their business, so Jerome was probably retired by then.

Artistic connections[]

Frescobaldi supplied artists' materials to the Scottish court. His family also developed artistic connections in the Netherlands. In 1530 the painter Ambrosius Benson and a Spanish apothecary called Arigon were appointed to look after the affairs of his daughter Johanna or Jennette Frescobaldi.[29] She married Guyot de Beaugrant.[30] He was a sculptor in alabaster from the Duchy of Lorraine who worked for Margaret of Austria in Brussels and carved the story of Susannah and the Elders on a fireplace in the administration building of the "Liberty of Bruges" or Brugse Vrije, following the designs of Lancelot Blondeel.[31] They moved to Spain in 1533.[32]

References[]

  1. ^ James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer: 1500-1504, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1901), p. 227.
  2. ^ Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Johns Hopkins, 2009), p. 159: Nunziatella Alessandrini, 'The Far East in the Early 16th Century: Giovanni da Empoli’s Travels', Mary N. Harris, Global Encounters European Identities (Pisa, 2010), p. 218.
  3. ^ Cosmo Innes, Ledger of Andrew Halyburton, 1492-1503 (Edinburgh, 1867), p. 6
  4. ^ James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer: 1500-1504, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1901), p. 241-3.
  5. ^ Morvern French & Roger Mason, 'Art, Artefacts, Artillery', in Roger Mason & Alexander Fleming, Scotland and the Flemish People (Birlinn, 2019).
  6. ^ George Burnett, Exchequer Rolls of Scotland: 1502-1507, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1889), pp. 374-5.
  7. ^ Thomas Thomson, 'Protocol Books of Edinburgh', PSAS (1863), p. 150.
  8. ^ Morvern French, 'Ostentatious by nature: Flemish Material Culture at the Marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor', International Review of Scottish Studies, 46 (2021), p. 37
  9. ^ James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer: 1500-1504, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. 227-8, 236.
  10. ^ George Burnett, Exchequer Rolls of Scotland: 1502-1507, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1889), p. 262
  11. ^ James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer: 1500-1504, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. 293.
  12. ^ Maria Hayward, The Great Wardrobe Accounts of Henry VII and Henry VIII (Boydell, 2012), p. xliii, xlix, 153.
  13. ^ Thomas P. Campbell, Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court (Yale, 2007), p. 114.
  14. ^ Charlotte Bolland & Andrew Chen, 'Meynnart Wewyck and the portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort in the Master's Lodge, St John's College, Cambridge', Burlington Magazine, 161 (April 2019), pp. 314–319.
  15. ^ Dino Frescobaldi & Francesco Solinas, The Frescobaldi: A Florentine Family (Florence, 2004), p. 77: British Library, Stowe MS 146, f.107 see external links.
  16. ^ James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer: 1506-1507, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. 55, 277-9.
  17. ^ Michelle Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain (Woodbridge, 2018), p. 54.
  18. ^ James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer: 1506-1507, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. 268-71.
  19. ^ Robert Kerr Hannay, Letters of James IV (Edinburgh, 1953), pp. 96-7 nos. 153-4.
  20. ^ James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer: 1507-1513, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 27-8.
  21. ^ James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer: 1506-1507, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. 85, 89.
  22. ^ Michael Apted & Susan Hannabuss, Painters in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1978), p. 135, citing TA, vol. 4, p. 27.
  23. ^ Jane E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh, 2007), p. 59: David Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe, the medieval kingdom and its contacts with Christendom, c.1214–1545, vol. 1 (Tuckwell, 2001), p. 119.
  24. ^ Michael Apted & Susan Hannabus, Painters in Scotland: 1301-1700 (Edinburgh, 1978), p. 73.
  25. ^ Katie Stevenson, 'Chivalry, British sovereignty and dynastic politics: undercurrents of antagonism in Tudor-Stewart relations, c.1490-c.1513', Historical Research, 86:234 (November 2013), p. 615
  26. ^ Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. xci, 173: Michael Apted & Susan Hannabuss, Painters in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1978), pp. 70–72.
  27. ^ Register of the Privy Seal, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1908), p. 380 no. 2489.
  28. ^ Aeneas James George Mackay, Exchequer Rolls vol. 14 (Edinburgh, 1893), p. 55.
  29. ^ Annales de la Société d'émulation de Bruges, Volumes 79-80 (Bruges, 1936), p. 96.
  30. ^ R. A. Parmentier, 'Bronnen voor de Geschiedenis van het Brugsche', Revue belge d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'art (Antwerp, 1941), p. 113
  31. ^ Aleksandra Lipińska, Moving Sculptures: Southern Netherlandish alabasters (Brill, 2015), pp. 66-8.
  32. ^ Antonio Bermejo Herreros, RECUERDOS ESPAÑOLES EN FLANDES TOMO III Bélgica. Zona Flamenca y Bruselas (Madrid, 2007), p. 206.

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