Patronage and Audience
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PATRONS AND PAINTERS

• 17^th Century Patronage – monopoly of wealth and power made Popes leaders and then dictators of patronage
• nepotism Papal appointments – expressions to riches and power ASA
• Picked painters from own area – no sense Italian
• Painter discovered by a patron and then worked, new patron
• Levels of patronage servitu particolare – live in, to art without destination
• Subject religious fresco or altar painting – usually given subject but some Leigh way –
• Undogmatic approach to art which was characteristic of the whole century and which led to an invigorating freedom of experiment and invention
• “go to a brickmaker as they work to order”
• If we are to believe biographers – winning place in society overriding preoccupation`

BAXANDALL – PAINTING AND EXPEIRENCE IN 15^th CENTURY ENGLAND

• 15^th century painting deposit of a social relationship
• Patron and painter – both parties worked within institutions commercial, religious or perceptual in the widest sense social – different from ours
• Man who asked for paid for and found a use for the painting was the patron – or client active, determining and not necessarily benevolent
• Allocation of Funds – type of payment can affect – commercial relationship – Duke of Ferrara who pays for work by square foot likely to get different painting thande ‘ Badi who is more commercially minded and pays by time and materials used paintings are fossils of economic life.
• Motives for commissioning pictures affect type of picture: “glory of God, honour of the city, and commemoration of myself” + personal satisfaction _ outlet for spending money well – to men in Florence made money by usuary and interest rates church art for example was necessary virtue and a pleasure, something between a charitable donation and a tax + enjoyment at looking at pictures
• Primary use for a picture was for looking at: with a view to receiving pleasing and memorable and even profitable stimulation
• PAINTING WAS STILL TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT TO THE PAINTERS – pattern of the picture trade tends to assimilate itself to that of more substantial manufactures – post-Romantic (present state) like post-Idusrial Revoltuion
• Patrons usually individuals or small groups – even with big organisations like the church – someone commission and see through the project
• Client intervention: what the painter has to paint, how and when client pays, when client to deliver and specific colours tc
• Shift away from gilt splendour – associated with client’s taste + physical shortage of gold - gilt splendour and the level of aquamarine replaced by skill as the main contractual obligation – dichotomy between materials and skill – which was most important - goes back to money and contracts, how to split between skill and materials “gold to brush” – client would ask for landscapes to fill the background of the picture thus enabling skill + expenditure on labour – ultimate skill feature is the payment by the hour.
• Master – contracts show client desire to have the mastetr paoint and e present for all painting – the client confers lustre on the picture not with gold but with mastery, the hand of the master himself.
• 1410 – 1480 – v. different public attitude toward painters- much more emphasis on skill as opposed to quality of materials used.

Functions of Art

Pictures existed to meet institutional needs – help with specific institutional and spiritual needs

Church’s view function of images three fold:

1. Instruction of simple people
2. incarnation + examples saints more active our memories
3. Excite feelings of devotion – being aroused more effectively by things seen than heard

Lucid, vivd and readily accessible stimuli to meditation on the Bible and the lives of saints. – these needs will have to be converted into a brief for the painter

Conclusions

Bits of social practice heighten our perception of paintings – reverse ie – forms and styles of apitning may sharpen our perception of society.

Main material of social history restricted in their medium – mass of words and v. few numbers – difficult to know what is was to be person of a certain kind in a certain place.

Society develops distinctive skills and habits – which have a visual aspect – visual sense main organ of experience – visual skills and habits part of the medium of the painter pictorial style gives access to the visual skills and habits and through these to the distinctive social experience – pictures become documents as valid as any others, not in philistine way like “a renaissance merchant riding to the market” – we observe something about the painters but about their society

The eye is called the first of all the gates

Through which the Intellect may learn and taste

Other Notes in this Category

1. A 15TH CENTURY PAINTING IS A DEPOSIT OF A SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP – IS THIS TRUE OF ALL WORKS OF ART
2. Art and Propaganda
3. Idea of History of Art
4. Patronage and Audience
5. Why do people want to destroy images?

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