3. The Economics of Painting: Patronage vs. the Market

A priceless Klimt painting turned out at auction to have a price - $135 million. Scholarship on painting is sympathetic to markets, unlike scholarship on music. Picasso was even called an entrepreneur.  Picasso was quite wealthy early in his career and died a billionaire. Not every artist starves.Painting requires a certain level of economic development. Paint was not cheap. Both paintings and tapestries were portable and highly valued. Painting walls or ceilings -was the original mode. Now called frescos, building paintings were, of course, immobile.The Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens, was the most prolific and successful painter of his time. He had a large workshop which would execute his overall sketches.  Rubens would then come in and paint the eye – some specific part. This was simply division of labor. Rubenesque became a brand. Marx would have called this a Rubens sweatshop.Lecture 3 of 10 from Paul Cantor's Commerce and Culture.