Moving Pictures. Intra-European Trade in Images, 16th-18th Centuries

Neil De Marchi & Sophie Raux (éd.)

This collection focuses overtly on the internal dynamics and links between art markets in the Early Modern period, but presupposes that art objects – here visual images – are objects of desire. During this period, however, desire changed; a great deal more of these objects came to be made for ordinary domestic consumption, including devotional purposes, than as tokens of the magnificence, piety, cultivation or learning of individual commissioners. Probably most still were commissioned, but to satisfy tastes that, though differentiated internationally, were widely shared within one country or region. Most too were commissioned at a distance, by agents, and were moved between maker and end-point distributor by specialised traders, many of whom – though far from all – were large-scale operators. The dominant focus of contributors here is therefore on the agents of this distance trade, its mechanisms and its impacts in terms of both satisfying and subtly shaping tastes, all at a range of prices. Measurement and mappings are aspects of this traffic. Focus was sharpened by concentrating on three questions: what is currently known about the number of images, whether in the form of paintings, prints, small sculptures or woven textiles, that circulated in early modern Europe? Through what channels and networks were they distributed? And what were the economic, social and institutional contexts?

Table of content

• Introduction
  Neil De Marchi & Sophie Raux

1. Quality, Risk and Uncertainty and the Market for Brussels Tapestry, 1450–1750
   
Koenraad Brosens
2. Supply-demand Imbalance in the Antwerp Paintings Market, 1630-1680
   Neil De Marchi, Sandra Van Ginhoven, Hans J. Van Miegroet
3. The Pont Notre Dame, Heart of the Picture Trade in France (16th-18th Centuries)
   Mickaël Szanto
4. Circulation, Distribution and Consumption of Antwerp Paintings on the Markets of the Southern Netherlands and Northern France (1570-1680)
   Sophie Raux
5. The Zeeland Connection: The Art Trade between the Northern and Southern Netherlands during the Seventeenth Century
   Claartje Rasterhoff & Filip Vermeylen
6. From Flanders to Sicily: the Network of Flemish Dealers in Italy and the International (Art) Market in the 17th Century
   Natalia Gozzano
7. Going South: The Space for Flemish Art Dealers in Seventeenth-Century Northern Italy
   Isabella Cecchini
8. Paris, Market of Europe. Russian and English Buyers on the Paris Market in the Second Half of the 18th Century
   Patrick Michel
9. Small Worlds. The Auction Economy in the Late Eighteenth-Century Paris Art Market
   Charlotte Guichard
10. Bidding as a Guide for British Visual Preferences: a Late Eighteenth-Century Case Study
    Bénédicte Miyamoto
11. Towards an Integrated Market ? The Austrian Netherlands and the Western European Trade in Previously-owned Painting (1750-1800)
    Dries Lyna