Joseph Shatzmiller. Cultural Exchange

In his latest book, Joseph Shatzmiller marries economic history and art history to explore the role of the marketplace in the exchange of aesthetic values in medieval Europe. The first part of the book examines Jewish moneylenders as agents of cultural transmission who received Christian art as pawns. Chapter 1 focuses on the humblest moneylenders, chapter 2 on those whose pawns included liturgical objects, and chapter 3 on the wealthiest pawnbrokers, who received luxury objects. The second section of the book explores human imagery in Ashkenazic art. Shatzmiller first discusses the murals in a rabbinical home and then attitudes of German Jews toward figural depictions. The third section examines artists who crossed religious borders, that is, Christians who worked for Jewish patrons and Jews who worked for Christians. Shatzmiller convincingly argues that the Christian art Jewish moneylenders held as pawns shaped Jewish aesthetics. Jews received silver vessels, precious jewelry, golden caskets, and even royal and ducal crowns. Shatzmiller draws on a wide range of sources—legal treatises, notaries' records, and inventories—that he organizes into a series of case studies to demonstrate that Jews and Christians shared cultural norms, peacefully coexisted, and even collaborated with one another on the production of art.

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