Fame, money and running an art business in Renaissance Florence

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The great Florentine artists worked under market and pricing pressures that hugely affected their work

Painting under Pressure: Fame, Reputation and Demand in Renaissance Florenceby Michelle O’Malley

The late 15th century saw increased demand for all types of goods, including art works. Such demand exerted significant pressure on painters with reputations for excellence, such as Botticelli,  Ghirlandaio,  Perugino and Filippino Lippi. They all produced high volumes of work, in different media and sizes, working for several clients and sometimes at different locations.  

Drawing largely on secondary literature and scientific analysis of paintings, O’Malley looks at how high-quality art was produced under this pressure. Theoretically, these painters could choose clients, manipulate outputs and set fees. But this was not Renaissance business practice. Renaissance economics did not operate under 18th-century ideas of manipulation of supply. Prices, set before designs were made, took no account of production costs. Pricing theory was related to a ‘Just price’ based on concepts of use, effort, scarcity, and an object’s ‘pleasingness’ or desirability. ‘Expertness’ and expressions of honour and magnificence also drove price negotiations, as did social interests, friendships or efforts to attract new patronage.

By the late 15th century artists were being appreciated not merely as mimics of nature but for their skills and talent. Focus centred on figures, and descriptive terms highlight the movement and presence that artists gave them. Thus the humanist, Cristoforo Landino described paintings as ‘charmingly rich’, ‘elegant’ or ‘lively’. Quality was not judged subjectively but according to such features. ‘Distinguished’ work was differentiated from that of, say, Neri de Bicchi, which simply incorporated new-looking elements. Fame was key to demand. A note from 1490 to the Duke of Milan shows how an artist’s worth might be judged from a list of his patrons.

Painters’ reputations have generally not connected their stylistic evolution with their list of clients. O’Malley posits, however, that artists could not develop stylistically without engaging with commissions. She discusses early connections leading to Botticelli and Ghirlandaio’s commission in the Sistine Chapel in the early 1480s, which solidified their reputations. The connections that led Perugino to the same commission and that determined Filippino’s commission in the Brancacci Chapel are more speculative.

While expert painters could negotiate prices above the norm, they did so only occasionally.  The fees of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Filippino Lippi were not uniform and nor did they rise over their careers. Producing quality works while dealing with unpredictable income and high demand meant production speed was crucial, as was delegation.

Design was the backbone of style and the primary evidence of a master’s effort, hence value. This meant that masters strictly controlled it, although parts could be delegated; for instance, assistants might make studies of hands for the master to choose from. Transferring designs to a support was also probably done by assistants, but the master would correct the underdrawing.

Re-use of drawings was recognized practice by the late 15th century. This was not motivated simply by laziness, but allowed further creative exploration of design possibilities. Reusing cartoons did not preclude combining new but it still required control, organization and forethought to give an impression of high quality and high effort, while expending less. Nonetheless, recycling played a role in Perugino’s loss of reputation. He was criticized, in his lifetime, for not expending enough effort, but it may have allowed him to increase income or bring down prices. In fact, manipulating production to affect income was not Renaissance practice; ideas on increasing income centred on increasing production.

While for Perugino quality rested largely on establishing and presenting recognized images, in contrast Filippino and Ghirlandaio’s practice resembled Botticelli’s. For them, quality depended on imagination and novelty, evident in design.

Effects with pigments were significant to style, quality and effort and allowed more workshop input that design. Masters painted heads and hands while assistants did drapery, architecture and sky, although colour balance, assigning painting tasks, overseeing and correcting work took considerable amounts of a master’s time. Refuting the argument of ‘autograph painting’ versus ‘non-autograph painting’ O’Malley says master painters made choices on quality, clear-headedly choosing who painted which part on a case-by-case basis.

Botticelli himself put considerable effort into designs and painted principal features and figures on prominently located works for notable patrons. On works outside Florence he only did the design, his workshop did the painting.

With management central to a master’s skills, primary business in commissioned work often ran alongside secondary work producing paintings derived from the primary ones. Derivative works were standard workshop practice serving the market’s lower end, bringing economic benefits and keeping a master’s work in the public eye. Vasari noted the number of Botticelli’s paintings in ‘case’ (houses), rather than ‘palazzi’ (palaces), although in fact even the wealthy Medici family owned derivative works after Filippino Lippi.

While master painters made complex calculations based on tangible and intangible market factors, in the 1490s the artistic climate changed: the influence of the puritanical religious leader Savonarola, the Medici’s exile and the French invasion dampened Florentine spending, changing levels of demand for art. While Ghirlandaio died in 1494 and Perugino turned to Umbrian patrons, Botticelliand Filippino responded to this altered market with more austere styles satisfying their clients’ changed needs and underlining the dynamics demand had on their production.

Painting under Pressure: Fame, Reputation and Demand in Renaissance Florence,by Michelle O’Malley is published by Yale University Press, 2013.