Coin & Conscience: Popular Views of Money, Credit and Speculation
This collection of 70 woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs depicts a range of subjects surrounding money and credit from 16th through the 19th centuries. These images trace changing attitudes toward money from the Reformation to the Industrial Revolution, showing the transition from the Church's position against the amassing of individual wealth to the emergence of capitalism in Europe.
Prints include views of stock exchanges, banks, mints, and treasuries; portraits of bankers, statesmen, financiers, and money lenders; and depictions of taxation, corruption, poverty, charity, anti-Semitism, speculation, credit, and the relationship between religion and money.
More than 75 individual artists are represented in the collection, including prominent artists such as Goltzius, Rembrandt, Hogarth, Dürer, and Breughel. A bibliography of selected works on the history of art and capitalism provides opportunities for further research.