Painting for the Market
Commercialisation of Art in Antwerp's Golden Age
by Filip Vermeylen
Paperback (Out of print)
(October 2003)
ISBN: 9782503513812
Price: $83.00
On back order
This study examines the process of commercialization of art which took place in Antwerp during the long sixteenth century, an era of rapid expansion of both the city’s economy and its art market. Indeed, Antwerp carved altarpieces, paintings, tapestries, books and other luxury items were exported to an area stretching from the Baltic region to the Mediterranean Basin during this time period. The key development that explains the success of Antwerp as an export center for the arts, the author argues, lies not only in the strength of the Antwerp economy and the artistic tradition of the Southern Netherlands, but specifically in the shift from ordering artwork on commission to the production for the open market. In other words, Antwerp artists were much more inclined to produce art on spec and, consequently, art was commercialized at an early stage and became the subject of intense trading. Focusing on painting and to some degree on other art forms such as sculpture and tapestry, the author surveys the various factors that contributed to this phenomenon: proto-industrial workshops engaged in standardized production of popular images, and the sophisticated commercial infrastructure that the city could boast allowed art to be sold wholesale to an international clientele at the panden (specialized sales halls). However, the flourishing of the art market was ultimately a direct result of the increased demand for luxury goods, both foreign and domestic, and Antwerp was essentially the locale where supply and demand for art converged. The booming art market led to increased commodization of works of art; art dealers entered on the scene and further professionalized the art trade during the second half of the sixteenth century. In painting, commercialization led to a diversification of the genres, a form of product innovation that generated new demand. Clearly, Antwerp’s pivotal position in the European trade network and its pioneering role in introducing capitalist commercial techniques had transformed the way art was marketed and produced. The outbreak of the Dutch Revolt during the last third of the sixteenth century severely disrupted the economy of the Southern Netherlands, and as a result, the Antwerp art market collapsed in the mid-1580s. However, in the difficult closing years of the sixteenth century, a transformation process began to take shape in which the foundations were laid for yet a new era of cultural eminence for the city of Antwerp.
- By (author) Filip Vermeylen
Other Titles in this Series
Message in a Bottle
Merchants' letters, merchants' marks and conflict management in 1533-34. A source edition
Volume 57
Public Opinion and Political Contest in Late Medieval Paris
The Parisian Bourgeois and his Community, 1400-1450
Volume 60
Economies, Public Finances, and the Impact of Institutional Changes in Interregional Perspective
The Low Countries and Neighbouring German Territories (14th-17th centuries)
Volume 36
Innovation and Medieval Communities
The Circulation of Ideas and Practices in and out of the Town (1200-1500)
Volume 63
Les identites urbaines au Moyen Age. Regards sur les villes du Midi francais
Actes du colloque de Montpellier 8-9 decembre 2011
Volume 32
The Seven Sorrows Confraternity of Brussels
Drama, Ceremony, and Art Patronage (16th-17th Centuries)
Volume 37
Moving Pictures. Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries
Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries
Volume 34
Governments of the Universitates
Urban Communities of Sicily in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Volume 21
Sociabilite urbaine et criminalisation etatique
La justice namuroise face a la violence de 1360 a 1555
Volume 39
Earning Dignity
Labour Conditions and Relations during the Century of the Black Death in Marseille
Volume 38
Des villes en revolte
Les republiques urbaines aux Pays-Bas et en France pendant la deuxieme moitie du XVIe siecle
Volume 23
Gouverner la ville au bas Moyen Age
Les elites dirigeantes de la ville de Namur au XVe siecle
Volume 16
La Justice dans une ville du Nord du Royaume de France au Moyen Age
Etude sur la pratique judiciaire a Saint-Quentin (fin XIe-debut XVe siecle)
Volume 24
Similar Books
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Nurturing the Elite
Representations of Drinking, Eating, and Religious Vessels in Palmyrene Funerary Iconography
Volume 13
Portraying the Individual in the Roman East
Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Volume 18
Technical Studies of Asian Art
Proceedings of the Seventh Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art
Art and Mysticism in Silesia in the Baroque Period
Angelus Silesius, Bernhard Rosa, and Michael Willmann
Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie
The Arts and Archaeology of Funerary Cultures in Islam
Volume 10.0
Die (Ent-)Politisierung der Kunstwissenschaft/(De)Politicising Art Studies
Marxistische Traditionslinien seit 1968/Marxist Traditions since 1968
Volume 27
