Mapping Markets for Paintings in Europe 1450-1750

Description

Over the course of the fifteenth century easel paintings edged out tapestries, frescoes and wood inlay pictures on the walls of private dwellings. Millions of such paintings were produced in the period 1450-1800, in all shapes and sizes, and across the whole range of prices. Who bought them? How were they distributed? What place did they occupy among other luxury possessions? Such questions seem to require that visual culture be treated as an integral part of family spending and commercial pursuits. This volume is the outcome of a four-year collaboration between art historians, economists, social historians and museum professionals from the US, Australia and Europe; its aim was to map the new ground identified by these and related questions, in local contexts, but with comparative and longitudinal concerns constantly in mind. The result is an entirely new matrix of the business and artistic interactions through which visual cultures in early modern Europe were formed. The editors, Neil De Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet, an economist and an art historian, have collaborated across their disciplines for ten years. Here they have interspersed participants' essays with brief connecting observations, to produce a text that respects disciplinary expertise while making connections across locations and across time. Much has been written about European paintings; but how markets in paintings emerged, who they served, what roles and institutions were developed that enabled them to function effectively, and how exchange affected visual preferences, have not been studied in such a deliberately wide-angled, comparative way. 'Mapping Markets' is not only a book about paintings, but a compendium of cross-disciplinary methods and insights. It charts the state of research in this trans-disciplinary field, identifies gaps, and poses questions for scholars and students wishing to pursue further the issues raised here. List of Contributors with their Affiliations ix List of Figures, Graphs, Tables and Appendices x List of Abbreviations xii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction / Neil De Marchi & Hans J. Van Miegroet 3 Part I: Material Culture and Paintings 1. Why Painting? / James J. Bloom 17 2. Paintings in Antwerp Houses (1532−1567) / Maximiliaan P. J. Martens & Natasja Peeters 35 3. Works of Art Competing with Other Goods in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Inventories / J. Michael Montias 55 4. Owning Paintings and Changes in Consumer Preferences in the Low Countries, Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries / Bruno Blondé & Veerle De Laet 69 Part II: Rules and Market Practices 5. Selling Paintings in Late Medieval Bruges. Marketing Customs and Guild Regulations Compared / Peter Stabel 89 6. Institutional Controls and the Retail of Paintings: The Painters’ Guild of Early Modern Venice / James E. Shaw 107 7. Troublesome Business: Dealing in Venice, 1600−1750 / Isabella Cecchini 125 8. Artists’ Responses to the Emergence of Markets for Paintings in Spain, c. 1600 / Miguel Falomir 135 9. Dutch Guilds and the Threat of Public Sales / Ed Romein & Gerbrand Korevaar 165 10. The Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke and the Marketing of Paintings, 1400−1700 / Katlijne Van der Stighelen & Filip Vermeylen 189 Part III: Drawing Connoisseurs into the Market 11. Entrepreneurial Craftsmen in Late Sixteenth-Century Augsburg / Andrew Morrall 211 12. Originals, Reproductions, and a 'Particular Taste' for Pastiche in the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Painting / Maria H. Loh 237 13. Art and Connoisseurship in the Auction Market of Later Seventeenth-Century London / Brian Cowan 263 14. Auctions and the Emergence of an Art Market in Eighteenth-Century Germany / Michael North 285 Part IV: Creative Dealing 15. Painters Marketing Paintings in Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Florence and Venice / Louisa Matthew 307 16. Antwerp and the Paris Art Market in the Years 1620−1630 / Mickaël Szanto 329 17. People and Practices in the Paintings Trade of Seventeenth-Century Rome / Loredana Lorizzo 343 18. Dispelling Negative Perceptions: Dealers Promoting Artists in Seventeenth-Century Naples / Christopher R. Marshall 363 19. Transforming the Paris Art Market, 1718−1750 / Neil De Marchi & Hans J. Van Miegroet 383 Bibliography 407 Appendices 439 Index 449