Most of this increased production went into the mints of
western Europe.
Copper also played a significant role in Renaissance
industry. It was used as an ingredient of bronze in the
manufacture of cannon and bells and by itself for the
minting of coins. Details of all aspects of Renaissance met-
allurgy are available in the illustrated volumes of Georgius
AGRICOLA, Agostino RAMELLI, Vannoccio BIRINGUCCIO, and
Lazarus Ercker. Ercker’s illustrated Beschreibung (Prague,
1574) is a systematic survey of metallurgical operations
that has been called the earliest analytical manual of the
subject.
meteorology Scientific understanding of the weather
made little progress during the Renaissance because me-
teorology was still based on an outdated COSMOLOGYand
time-honored texts. “Meteors” in the early modern period
referred to any atmospheric phenomenon; thus “watery
(or aqueous) meteors” were hail or snow; “fiery (or ig-
neous) meteors” shooting stars. In the PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM
all such meteors were features of the sublunary sphere, the
region below the moon that was subject to change and
decay (unlike the crystalline heavenly spheres above). Me-
teorology was therefore considered a branch of astronomy:
for instance, in the Compilatio...de astrorum scientia by the
13th-century astronomer Duke Leopold of Austria (first
printed edition 1489) part six dealt with the weather.
In the absence of any natural physical explanation for
their occurrence, storms or gales were likely to be ascribed
to the Devil or witchcraft; following this line of thinking,
the ringing of church bells could therefore be recom-
mended as an appropriate deterrent against thunder, and
holy water as a protection against lightning. There were a
few honorable exceptions to the predominantly supersti-
tious attitude to meteorological phenomena. In England
William Merle (or Merlee) kept detailed records of the
weather at Oxford in the period 1337–44 and used them
to draw conclusions about weather patterns. Similar rec-
ords were kept by his contemporary Evno (or Enno) of
Würzburg from 1331 to 1355, but he used them mainly in
support of astrological calculations.
Weather forecasting had important implications for
farmers, sailors, and shepherds, and people depended
heavily on local observations of the behavior of birds and
beasts. Many of these indicators were taken over un-
changed from classical authorities, such as Virgil’s Geor-
gics. Other texts often quoted in meteorological matters
were Aristotle’s Meteorologica, Seneca’s Quaestiones na-
turales, Pliny’s Historia naturalis, or the medieval com-
pendium, Bartholomaeus’s De proprietatibus rerum. For a
more modern but no less traditional text containing me-
terological material readers could turn to DU BARTAS’s La
Semaine (1578).Metsys, Quintin (Quintin Massys) (1465/66–1530)
Netherlands painter
Presumably trained in his native Louvain, Metsys entered
the Antwerp painters’ guild in 1491. His earliest work in-
dicates points of contact with Dirk BOUTSand his follow-
ers. His Antwerp Lamentation triptych (1507–09) is a
grand composition, drawing on the 15th-century Nether-
landish tradition, and his Banker and his Wife (1514; Lou-
vre, Paris) is an antiquarian exercise in the style of Petrus
CHRISTUS. In the Brussels Holy Kindred triptych (1509) fig-
ure types derived from Robert CAMPINcoexist with classi-
cizing architectural details of recent Italian derivation.
Metsys’s early interest in grotesque facial types was forti-
fied by sketches by LEONARDO DA VINCI; works such as the
Paris Old Man of 1513 and the presumably contemporary
London Old Woman are probably copies after the Floren-
tine painter’s work. Metsys also excelled as a painter of
more conventional portraits, of which the most famous is
the divided diptych of Erasmus (Rome) and Peter Giles
(Longford Castle). His two sons Jan (1509–75) and Cor-
nelis (1511–65) became painters at Antwerp in 1531.MMeettssyyss,, QQuuiinnttiinn 331155MetallurgyA woodcut from a treatise (1574) on metallurgy
by Lazarus Ercker.