Prices on the market: the account book of a merchant in Rome in the late 17th Century. In Kunstmärkte zwischen Stadt und Hof. Prozesse der Preisbildung in der europäischen Vormoderne Pag.241-246 Petersberg Michael Imhof Verlag. (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Market for Paintings in Italy During the Seventeenth Century
Journal of Economic …, 2012
We study the seventeenth-century market for figurative paintings in Italy analyzing original contracts between patrons and artists. We show that a number of supply and demand factors affected prices. We find a positive and concave relation between prices and size of paintings reflecting economies of scale. We show evidence of a positive relationship between prices and the number of figures depicted. Trade in paintings was sufficient to equalize prices between different destinations. Finally, we provide support for the Galenson hypothesis of a positive relation between age of experimental artists and quality as priced by the market.
Journal of Art Historiography , 2020
Anyone who doubts that a society's art market reveals its underlying values need only consider the case of Inigo Philbrick, the high-flying young dealer who sold investors overlapping shares of the same blue-chip contemporary works and who was recently apprehended in Vanuatu. The present volume boasts no one quite so colourful, though it too concerns a moment in which the business side of art acquired new prominence. Based on an international congress held at Rome's Palazzo Barberini, the anthology's ten chapters consider diverse facets of art's production, circulation, and recirculation in early modern Rome, unfortunately not all centred on the time and place announced in the title. This is a limitation in a study of art markets, which are typically localized and responsive to shifting conditions. While less focused than one would wish, the collection nonetheless illuminates a key phase in the market's development while contextualizing our own age of glossy magazines, glamorous fairs, 'specullectors', and illicit trafficking of cultural property. Both symposium and anthology reflect the efforts of Paolo Coen, professor of the history of art at the Università degli Studi di Teramo, to bring to Rome something of the economic perspective long established in studies of the seventeenth-century Netherlands. Specifically, he aims to rehabilitate a century that got short shrift from Francis Haskell, whose 1963 Patrons and Painters passed from seventeenth-century Rome to eighteenth-century Venice in response to a perceived collapse of economic and artistic leadership beginning under the Chigi Pope, Alexander VII (1655-1667). Coen prefers the more balanced view offered by historians like Franco Venturi and the contributors to the 2000 exhibition Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century in Philadelphia; like them, he reads 'the passage between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Rome in terms of continuity, albeit still keeping some indisputable differences' (pp. 4-5). Coen's own study of the city's eighteenth-century painting trade, published in 2010 with an extensive documentary appendix of wills, inventories, estimates, export licenses, sales catalogues, and period correspondence, contributed significantly to mapping this 1 Il mercato dei quadri a Roma nel diciottesimo secolo: la domanda, l'offerta e la circolazione delle opere in un grande centro artistico europeo. 2 vols., Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2010. The covers of both publications are illustrated with details of Panini's imaginary picture gallery of
A Database of Prices Paid to Painters in Seventeenth-Century Rome
Getty Research Journal, 2010
In 1629, Giovanni Baglione, painter, academician, and biographer of artists, testified that he had not appraised his personal goods, but nonetheless felt that he was not as rich as he would like to be: "io non sono tanto ricco quanto vorrei essere." 1 The artist's wealth, like that of most Renaissance and baroque painters, was principally derived from what he earned selling his art. Therefore data that document prices paid for paintings, in distinction to resale prices or inventory evaluations, are the primary information for analyzing the socioeconomic lives of painters in early modern Europe. During the past two decades art historians increasingly have recognized the importance of economic factors in the making, selling, and display of art. Richard Goldthwaite and John Michael Montias, in particular, have pioneered the way for art historians of the Italian Renaissance and the northern baroque to study the economic lives of artists, yet there has been no comparable work on seventeenth-century Italy. 2 Despite Francis Haskell's influential study of Italian Baroque patronage, Patrons and Painters, which was published long ago, there remains a stark contrast between the rich socioeconomic literature on Dutch and Flemish painting of the seventeenth century and the literature available on the Italian baroque. 3 Moreover, the few art historians who have studied seventeenth-century Italian art from an economic perspective typically have concentrated, as Haskell did, on questions of patronage and market mechanisms, but rarely on the artists themselves. 4 To fill this lacuna, a team of five art historians and a social and an economic historian have written Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-Century Italian
Conditions of Trade and Their Role in Painting XV Century Italy
Актуальні питання у сучасній науці, 2023
This article explores the complex dynamics between clients and painters in fifteenth-century Italy, emphasizing how clients exerted significant influence on the artistic content and execution of works. This study uses a variety of research methods such as Documentary Analysis, Case Studies, and Comparative Analysis. A review of documented cases reveals the client's direct influence on the choice of subject matter, artistic elements, and execution of the commissioned work. Furthermore, it challenges traditional distinctions between "public" and "private" arts commissions and emphasizes their often public role in public spaces. In this historical context, artists were typically employed and controlled by individual clients and bound by formal contracts that set out obligations, payment terms, and quality standards. A recurring theme in discussions of art during this period is the delicate balance between the quality of materials and the skill of the artist. Clients can use resources strategically and prefer intricate details over flashy materials, a preference that is often documented in the contract. The economic value of artistic skill was widely recognized, and remuneration was adjusted to the artist's expertise, as reflected in the discussion of goldsmiths' reward in Archbishop St. Antoninus's Summa Theologica. Unlike today's art market, artists in the 15th century operated within the framework of structured patronage. Their work is based on formal agreements, with clients playing a vital role in shaping the artistic creation. This historical context highlights the differences between contemporary art practice and that of the 15th century, differences rooted in different economic and social structures. Finally, Актуальні питання у сучасній науці № 10(16) 2023 810 this article provides a comprehensive examination of the complex relationship between client and painter and provides valuable insights into the historical landscape of artistic patronage in fifteenth-century Italy.
The enigmatical and wellknown episode of the double portrait of archibishop Archinto - paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art - can be considered the most astonishing case of Milanese aristocracy patronage towards Titian. Starting from this famous case study, the investigation deals with the different aspects of acquiring and displaying artworks by masters born during the “Golden Age” of the Most Serene Republic of Venice in the collections of the most important noble families of the Stato di Milano. The connection with the appreciation of this great artists at the Habsburg court of Madrid is evident, but it can be considered as a long lasting and remarkable phenomenon in Lombardy.
The ‘maestro di casa’ was the professional who played a central role in the life of the court during the 16° and 17° centuries. In this paper, his role is investigated together with that of the other 'officiali' responsible for the administration and care of the prince's palace, that the ‘maggiordomo’ and the ‘guardaroba’. The ‘maestro di casa’ was the direct responsible for all the purchases, so he dealt with craftsmen and artists as well. His role inside the art market is pointed out through the accounts books of the aristocratic families for which they worked: these documents reveal the concrete mechanisms of loans, estimates, negotiations conducted directly by these professionals on behalf of their princes. Moreover, the properties, culture, social relationships of ‘maestri di casa’, ‘maggiordomi’ and guardaroba active in Rome during the 17° century are shown through their own testaments and inventories.
Guercino's' Prix-Fixe': Observations on Studio Practices and Art Marketing in Emilia
The Burlington Magazine, 1994
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