21
Summary
A Merchant Favoured by the Emperor
Point of View #16 focuses on two portraits long in storage by Christoph Amberger
(Kaufbeuren c. 1500/05 – 1562 Augsburg), a Renaissance painter from Augsburg:
they depict the patrician Ulrich Ehinger and his wife Ursula, née Meuting
(Augsburg c. 1507 – 1588 Augsburg). Together with his elder brother Heinrich,
the only recently identified sitter (Konstanz 1485 – 1537 Valladolid) was among
the period’s bestknown merchants from southern Germany in Spain. For a long
time both acted as agents on the peninsular for the Welser family from Augsburg,
who were among the leading financiers of the notoriously broke Charles V
(Emperor since 1519, King of Spain since 1516).
Painted around 153133, Amberger’s portraits emphasise the sitters’ elevated
social status, a result of Ulrich’s success as a merchant and his financial dealings
with the Spanish crown. The cross of Saint James on his breast identifies him as
a knight of the Order of Santiago (Spanish: Santiago (actually Sant Jago), i.e.
Saint James) whose grandmaster was Emperor Charles V himself; the cross is
also included prominently in two portrait medals of Ehinger produced around
this time by Christoph Weiditz, a medallist from Augsburg (ills. 6 and 7). Even
the silver casket shaped like a scallop (the attribute of Saint James) on the parapet
before Ursula may be read as a reference to the royal Spanish order of which
the knights’ wives were also members.
Born into one of Augsburg’s leading merchant families, Ursula married Ulrich
Ehinger in 1530; by 1533 at the latest he had settled in his wife’s hometown. The
couple’s ties to Charles V probably also explain the remarkable fact that Amberger
adopted motifs clearly informed by two portraits of the monarch he had
produced in, respectively, 1530 (it survives only in copies) and 1532 (ills. 8 and
9). The earlier portrait of the Emperor already includes the motif of the cloth in
Ursula’s left hand, while the motif of her husband clutching his gloves clearly
derives from the later of the two imperial portraits. Note also the pomander
watch in Ulrich’s left hand, one of the earliest extant depictions of a »clockwatch«,
i.e. a portable watch, in European art.
