When Michelangelo Was Modern: The Art Market andCollecting in Italy 1450–1650
CENTER FOR THE HISTORY OF COLLECTING, THE FRICK COLLECTION AND FRICK ART REFERENCE LIBRARY, NEW YORK
This two-day symposium will delve into the forces that motivated collectors and patrons of the fifteenth through the mid-seventeenth centuries to support artists and encourage innovative ideas that are now universally recognized as having transformed the artist’s status in society from craftsman to celebrity and for sowing the seeds of the modern art market. The symposium is intended to explore collecting and patronage beyond the confines of patrician patrons to include the roles of scholars, artists, courtesans, and
others as tastemakers, intermediaries, and agents of change.
The Keynote Address will be delivered by Inge Reist, Director of the Center for the History of Collecting Emerita, who will introduce the following issues:
Dynastic collections (e.g. Medici, Visconti, Sforza, Piccolomini, Borghese, Barberini)
Scholar collectors (e.g. Cassiano dal Pozzo, Marcantonio Michiel, Veronica Gambara)
Women collectors (e.g. Isabella d’Este, Christina of Sweden, Caterina Piccolomini)
Collecting for institutions, e.g. papal, ecclesiastical, and royal patrons (such as the
Borgia, della Rovere, Medici, and Charles V Hapsburg)
Our aim is to have the papers that follow expand on these themes. The topics may fall into the categories outlined below, although other subjects will be open for consideration:
The Role of Agents and the Seeds of the Modern Art Market
Artists as agents
Scholars as agents
Cardinals, Courtesans, and Counts
Patronage of cardinals and cardinal-nephews
Courtesans and tastemakers
Aristocratic collectors in regional centers such as Bologna, Venice, Milan
Risk Takers and the Shock of the New
The Carracci in Bologna and Rome
Caravaggio and Cardinal del Monte
Poussin, Claude, and the classical landscape
Please submit an abstract of 500–750 words by October 22, 2018 to the Center for the History of Collecting, at center@frick.org.