When Michelangelo Was Modern: The Art Market and Collecting in Italy 1450–1650
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)