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  

The patrons in Renaissance Italy included "corporate patrons" – city governments, religious institutions and orders, and "'confaternities'" – and "private patrons," such as merchants, humanists, aristocrats, rulers, patrician families, and a handful of artists, as well (9). Among private patrons could be found "'urbanized elites,'" who felt compelled to use means of conspicuous consumption – in this case "conspicuous commissions" - to help them "'formulate the ideological confirmation of [their] class," for they lacked "'the tangible evidence of status that the northern feudal nobility could take for granted'" (Goldthwaite, qtd. in Nelson, 4). In the commissioning game then, relationships among patrons featured a high level of competition and reflected a sort of dance in which players used art commissions to position themselves higher on the rung of socioeconomic and cultural status. The socioeconomic "situation in Italy provided a special incentive for those with disposable wealth to enhance their reputation through artistic commissions. This enhancement would be the patron's payoff" (10). With these weighty incentives, their status and reputation at stake in the commissions game, patrons assumed a great deal of creative power over the production of works of art. "The patron," notes Nelson et al., had "a unique and leading role, [...often 'generating'] the original idea or seed for a building" or another art piece" (18). They wielded both "carrots and sticks" to influence the artists they commissioned to produce high-quality work that would reflect positively on their own sense of sophistication, status, and wealth; and throughout the creative process they used their financial and social power over the artists they employed to ensure that the art they produced represented these attributes.

I have already suggested that the primary incentive for the patron in the commissions game was status. This payoff, an indispensible reward in Renaissance Italy, encapsulated other related and complementary benefits. Commissioning a work of art that properly broadcasted a patron's wealth and status could enhance a patron's reputation, public image, and prestige and distinguish him from citizens of lesser status (5). A commission for such durable commissions as works of art and architecture could also help a patron to assert and define his legacy, leading to lasting reputation and prestige and perhaps benefits to his progeny. While commissioning a piece of art "rarely [led to] financial gain" (5) and in fact cost the patron a great deal of material output (for employing the artist, materials, etc.), the product had the potential to bring about financial rewards down the line, and, in fact, "the financial cost of a commission brought its own benefit" because it signaled the wealth of the patron and distinguished him from those who could not afford such a commission (37), thus enhancing the patron's social and socioeconomic status. The indirect material benefits of commissioning a piece, referenced above, included economic payoffs deriving from the signaling of political connections in the art work, such as tax breaks or political appointments, and the development of a reputation as a trustworthy investment (50). The major costs for the commissioning patron were usually social in nature, and were "incurred when the message received from a work of art differed from the patron's expectation" (52).

Three important avenues for expenditures and conspicuous consumption included architecture, painting, and sculpture (9). While country clothing, banquets, spectacles, and funerals represented other popular forms of conspicuous consumption in Renaissance Italy, architecture and art proved more durable in nature and thus more likely to satisfy wealthy and high-status patrons' "concern for future viewers" and appease their preoccupation with their legacy (31).

Patrons employed such strategies as "signaling, stretching, and signposting" in the works they commissioned as means to enhance their status payoff from the commissions. Patrons "signaled" their status, wealth, culture, and taste with various creative adornments and accoutrements, as well as simply the quality of the work, in their commissions. "The key to signaling was differential costs, which ensured that a work of art [was] not cheap talk" and would distinguish the patron from those of lesser status (77). "The greater the differential costs of signals, whether because of monetary cost, status constraints, or requirements of taste or erudition, the more a particular commission separated one from the others" (80). Signaling could also help patrons instill "trust" in their customers. For example, Renaissance Italian pharmacists with fancy and elaborate containers "conveyed a reassuring message about the pharmacist" (74).

The strategy of "stretching" featured the "exaggeration or misrepresentation of important characteristics to convey an image intended to bathe the patron in a favorable light" (8). For example, in one commissioned work of art, Francesco Gonzaga depicted "a major battle against the French as a significant victory," when in fact such a victory was questionable (8).  Finally, "signposting" consisted of highlighting particular attributes "while simultaneously omitting other significant information." One example of signposting in commissioned art work was "the strategy of not indicating the source of one's wealth" (8).

Patrons targeted three major audiences: contemporary, future, and heavenly. They sought to "communicate" with other contemporary "elites especially those in their own city or region, who could identify the banners, placques, and symbols that accompanied so many commissions" (29) and told a story about what the commissioning patron wished to claim about himself or his family. They also aimed to communicate to "future viewers," a benefit furnished by the durable nature of works of art and architecture as opposed to "other forms of conspicuous consumption" (31). Finally, patrons who commissioned religious works targeted as their audience Heaven itself: They "wanted God and the saints to see their devotion, and hoped that their commissions were help them reduce their time in Purgatory" (29).

The commissions game in Renaissance Italy was notable for its drive for "magnificence" in art. Attributes of magnificence - splendor, beauty, glorification, and sumptuousness – signaled "distinction" in status, prestige, and wealth. Signaling magnificence allowed patrons to "distinguish themselves from those of lower status" and fulfilled "a social obligation" to behave in a manner becoming for their class (67). "Magnificence" required not only "sumptuousness," but "worthiness," as well, worthiness comprising "ornament, size, excellence of materials, [...] the perpetual duration of the work," "grand scale and noteworthy beauty," and "fit," or the art work's ability to 'be adapted to the dignity of the owner'" (71-71). The ambition for distinction fostered the phenomenon of "self-fashioning," a practice similar to advertising the positive characteristics one wanted to promote about oneself and one's lifestyle. Distinction and signaling required that "viewers appreciate the criteria used to [...] commission works of art" (69); only with this appreciation could the communication of differential costs be realized. And, of course, differential cost was paramount: A work of art only signals status if it shows you can afford what very few can (76-80).

Kimberly Ann Phoenix