Art markets in Europe, 1400-1800

"Economic and social historians are returning to the study of material culture at an opportune moment. The reinvention of art history during the 1980s has provided a serious challenge to earlier formalist and connoisseurial approaches to the discipline, in ways which will benefit historians in the current drive to study past societies in terms of what they consumed, produced, perceived and imagined. This group of essays focuses on three main issues: the demand for art, including the range of art objects purchased by various social groups; the conditions of artistic creativity and communication between different producing centres and artistic milieux; and the emergence of art markets which served to link the first two phenomena. The work draws on new research by art historians and economic and social historians from Europe and the United States, and covers the period from the late Middle Ages to the early nineteenth century."--Provided by the publisher.