Tommaso Portinari

Tommaso Portinari, detail of Portinari Triptych by Hugo van der Goes

Tommaso Portinari (1424?-1501) was an Italian banker for the Mèdici bank in Bruges. He was a member of a prominent Florentine family, coming from Portico di Romagna, near Forlì; that family had included Dante's muse, Beatrice. His father was a Medici branch manager, and after his death in 1421, Tommaso and his orphaned brothers were taken in and raised in the household of Còsimo de' Mèdici. Today he is mainly remembered for two significant commissions of Early Netherlandish paintings.

Portinari was an employee in the Bruges branch for a very long time, more than 25 years, but never rose higher than assistant manager and factor, apparently at the insistence of Còsimo de' Mèdici, who did not trust him. After Còsimo's death, he became general manager and shareholder in the branch at the age of 40. When Francesco Sassetti's influence removed the long-standing ban on lending to secular officials in 1471, Portinari used his position to make very large and extremely risky unsecured loans to Charles the Bold—loans which were never repaid and cost the bank heavily. He initially loaned 6000 groat, more than twice that branch's total capital; the loan only grew worse, until it stood at 9500 groat in 1478. Unsurprisingly, for his good services, Portinari became a favored councilor to Charles the Bold. On the latter's death in battle, the loan went essentially into default. Further good money was thrown after bad when he lent to Archduke Maximilian of Austria, Charles's successor. A small portion of this loan was eventually repaid.

He was the defendant in Ruffini v. Portinari in 1455 [1], one of the very first legal cases to deal with separation of partnerships and legal liability: he was sued by the Milanese Damiano Ruffini for "defective packing of nine bales of wool bought by the plaintiff from the Mèdici branch in London. The defendant pointed out that the bales never belonged to the Bruges branch and that the plaintiff should sue the London branch." Portinari testified that the two branches were legally and commercially separate, apparently persuading the judge who denied Ruffini's suit, but upholding his right to sue the manager of the London branch.

Financial problems with the sale of alum from the joint Papal-Mèdici alum cartel and bad investments like two galleys that either sank or were captured by privateers, along with the still outstanding bad loans to Charles the Bold, caused the Mèdici to finally give up on Bruges in 1478, when they unilaterally dissolved the partnership. Portinari was essentially fired. His attempts to start his own bank failed, his past services to the Mèdici and the Duchy of Burgundy were forgotten, and he died a pauper.

While at the height of his career, he had himself memorialized in religious paintings. One, the Portinari Triptych, is visible today in Florence. In commissioning it, he ostentatiously compared himself with his predecessor at the Bruges branch, Angelo Tani. He may also have commissioned The Last Judgment, by Hans Memling, as it has been suggested that the soul of the sinner being weighed on the scales of St. Michael is in fact a donor portrait of Portinari. This painting, also intended for a Florentine church, was hijacked by pirates from the Baltic Sea, leading incidentally to a lengthy lawsuit against the Hanseatic League to force them to return it. He and his wife are portrayed in donor portraits in Hans Memling's c.1470 painting Scenes from the Passion of Christ, now held by the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.

References

• De Roover (1904-1972), Raymond Adrien (1948), The Medici Bank: its organization, management, and decline, New York; London: New York University Press; Oxford University Press (respectively) {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |Authorlink= (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (Largely a reprint of three articles De Roover published in The Journal of Economic History.)
• De Roover (1904-1972), Raymond Adrien (1963), The rise and decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494; (Harvard studies in business history; no. 21), Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |Authorlink= (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (A complete rewrite of the above book, based on original research in the Florentine archives.)