The merchant George Gisze (1497-1562)

Georg Gisze (1497–1562) came from a wealthy Danzig family of merchants, was ennobled in 1519 by the Polish King Sigismund I and in 1522 went to the Stalhof, the London branch of the Hanseatic League. Hans Holbein made his second trip to the English capital from Basel in 1532. In London, he was the unchallenged leading portraitist until his death in 1543. Besides people from the royal court and surroundings, he also received commissions for portraits in the early years from the merchants at the Stalhof, including the portrait of a man from the Wedigh family in the Gemäldegalerie. But none of these merchant portraits can rival this panel in terms of scale and effort. Gisze is portrayed in half-length in a wood-panelled room, which serves as his office. A magnificent Anatolian carpet covers the table in the foreground on which stand a delicate vase of Venetian glass containing carnations and rosemary, a pocket watch – a technical masterpiece of the time – and a tin box for writing implements as well as many other things. Numerous letters are stuck on the walls. From the shelves on the left hang scales and a signet, from those on the right a magnificently decorated ball containing string, books, heavy gold rings and keys. Holbein skilfully offsets the merchant from all these accoutrements by clothing him in shimmering red silk sleeves, a voluminous black cape and a beret. Without doubt, Gisze himself wished to be surrounded by all these objects in order to communicate a certain image of himself: the letters allude to his work as a merchant, while the precious objects testify to his prosperity and taste. Gisze’s motto is inscribed on the wall on the left: “Nulla sine merore voluptas” (No joy without suffering). The portrait exhibits a degree of extravagance (the magnificent red silk of Gisze’s robe and the sword of which only the crystal pommel is visible above on his left hip) which does not appear in Holbein’s portraits of other merchants. This was probably an allusion to Gisze’s noble standing. The piece of paper near the upper edge of the picture, which looks as if it were stuck not on the painted back wall but on the surface of the picture itself, contains two lines in Latin, which translated mean: “Distich to Georg Gisze. This painting, which you see, reproduces Georg’s facial features, so lively is his eye, so shapely are his cheeks / aged 34 years / in the year of the Lord 1532”. The use of Latin suggests education and this seems to be significant in connection with the letter that Gisze is just opening: the sender has addressed it to his “broder”; the only brother of the merchant who was still alive in 1532, however, was Tiedemann Giese (1480–1550), an important Catholic cleric and scholar and later Bishop of Kulm, and then Ermland. Tiedemann knew Latin and Greek, was friends with Nicolaus Copernicus and corresponded with Erasmus of Rotterdam in Basel, of whom, in turn, Holbein painted several portraits. The fact that Georg Gisze contacted Holbein directly after his arrival in England, may, in view of such a connection, be no coincidence: his brother may have learned about Holbein from Erasmus and informed Georg that the greatest portraitist of the time was on his way to London and that Georg therefore had a unique opportunity to have a high-quality portrait painted of him. At the same time, the letter lends the portrait a familiar note, and the interpretation of the bunch of flowers, as a symbol of love would seem to make sense in this connection: Gisze may already have been engaged to be married, for two years later he went back to Danzig, married and became a city counsellor. Probably he had the portrait done in order to send it to his brother and to show off his circumstances to his future spouse. Stephan Kemperdick | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting – Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019