Collectors and Collecting Renaissance Era Patrons, Artists and Spaces

Sheri Hope Boardman 

Vincent Anthony Falkiewicz

            The readings today displayed the intricate workings of the Renaissance buying and selling of art, specifically commissioned art.  This market showed a number of different patrons, all with somewhat similar incentives for buying these pieces of art.  Additionally, both the consumer and producer had different costs and benefits for this commissioned art.  These costs and benefits proved to include social, financial, political, and religious factors.

            For one, there were a plethora of patrons in the Renaissance commissioning game.  They included both private and corporate patrons.  The former included specific patrons such as merchants, humanists, aristocrats, rulers, and in some cases, other artists.  The latter included much broader patrons such as city governments and religious orders or brotherhoods.  Examples of these were provided throughout the reading, and included the Duchy of Milan, Kingdom of Naples, Papal States, Republics of Venice and Florence.  Sometimes, private and corporate patrons would even overlap.  For example, the Pope was a patron, as well his entire religious cabinet.  Whichever group the patron came from, they still had similar incentives for buying this art.

            As shown throughout the readings, consumers had a few main incentives for purchasing this art; the main incentive being to convey their wealth or social status.  They were interested in "demonstrating magnificence."  Magnificence, however, was not always displayed in the fashion of expensive art.  As the first reading points out, patrons not only wanted to prove their wealth, but also "set themselves apart from others."  Aside from displaying wealth, some patrons and artists wanted to show their devoutness and religious affiliation.  Churches and religious paintings were created and commissioned in the market to prove individual or group devoutness to their religion.

            These incentives and purchases created a few costs and benefits to consumers and producers.  For one, there are always the financial costs of creating anything, and these costs were mildly taken into account when creating a piece of art.  Mostly considered by both sides was the longevity of their name and reputation through art.  Artists wanted to create rare art, which was extremely difficult to recreate, in order to make their art and name long lasting.  Buyers, on the other hand, were interested in creating a long lasting reputation for their name and society.  The benefit of developing an "image of themselves that defined the norms of behavior and appearance in their society" was highly regarded when playing the commission game. 

            Finally, artists and patrons played the "signaling game," a Nobel Prize winning theory developed in 2001, to show their skills and wealth to the world.  This theory shows how people can not physically display things such as wealth, so they must signal them through other means; in this case that means is art.  The same works for artists, as they can only display their worth through their work, and cannot physically show each individual how good they are at their form of art.  This game is an extremely important part of the commissioning game.

            To conclude, the art market of the Italian Renaissance had both corporate and private patrons each with his or her (in rare cases) own incentives.  These incentives created a balance of costs and benefits to both sides, mainly the longevity of reputation.  The long lasting reputation seemed to be the main interest of individuals at this time, which created an interesting sort of signaling and signing during this time period.  Overall, through these readings we see how the commissioning game differs from a natural economic market. 

Erica Gilbert-Levin  

Kimberly Ann Phoenix