HI203 THE EUROPEAN WORLD 1500-1750
THEME 3: CULTURE
ART AND SOCIETY
SIGNIFICANCE
 The production and consumption of art can give us important insights into
the social, economic, cultural, political, and religious development of early
modern Europe.
QUESTIONS
 What were the functions of the visual arts?
 How did art markets develop across Europe?
WHAT WERE THE FUNCTIONS OF THE VISUAL ARTS?
‘...the traditional notion of art is unhelpful. Any image belonged to a wider
category of goods, one which included liturgical and household furnishings,
clothing, embroidery, maps, clocks, scientific, and musical instruments – objects
which all contributed to a general sense of a contemporary visual culture’.
[Evelyn Welch, Art in Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 1997), p. 133]
Exodus 20:4: ‘Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, nor the
likeness of anything that is in heaven above nor in the earth below.’
The Catholicon of Johannes Balbus (d. 1298).
St Bernardino of Siena
Girolamo Savonarola
St Bavo in Haarlem
HOW DID ART MARKETS DEVELOP ACROSS EUROPE?
Piazza San Marco
The Sensa fair
Luca Giordano/Luca Fa-presto
Charles Lumague
Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects
(1550)
Michelangelo
Pope Julius II
Albrecht Dürer
Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860)
Neri di Bicci
Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300-1600
(Baltimore, 1993)
Bruges Guild of Image-Makers
Castille
Este court of Ferrara
Nepotism
Nuremberg and Augsburg
Antwerp
Matthijs Musson
Jean-Michel Picart
The East India Company