Scrambling for scudi: notes on painters' earnings in early Baroque Rome
Art Bulletin, The, June, 2003 by Richard E. Spear
Continued from page 3.
If his neighbor was right in saying that Orazio Gentileschi was not well-off in 1612 (later in England Orazio complained he was short of money at a time when he was handsomely paid), Adam Elsheimer was downright poor by comparison, though it is difficult to know to what degree he simply failed to manage his affairs. Artemisia Gentileschi, too, was ever in need, as was Lanfranco, yet he certainly earned a great deal of money and lived well. In a rare statement from an artist about his cumulative payments, Lanfranco boasted in a letter of 1641 that he had made more than 30,000 ducats in seven and a half years in Naples--largely from fresco projects--which was the equivalent of 3,000 scudi a year. (67)
In 1611, shortly after Elsheimer died in Rome, Rubens wrote, "I pray that God will forgive Signor Adam his sin of sloth... with his own hands he could have built up a great fortune and made himself respected by all the world." (68) The biographer Joachim von Sandrart also says that Elsheimer "was poor although he received high payments for his works....he...ran into debts...[and] was put into the Debtor's prison.... " (69) Actually, many Romans were similarly jailed. In the early 1580s, 6 percent of the population passed some time in debtor's prison. (70) In light of Elsheimer's circumstances, his drawing of an artist's studio appears poignantly autobiographical (Fig. 1). It shows an artist unable to work because of poverty, which is graphically depicted in his attitude of despair, the hungry and naked children, and the empty cupboard. (71)
Elsheimer, however, seems to have been an exception. Without saying so, Mancini reveals that artists indeed could be very well off when he reported that a good painter could earn three to six scudi a day. If one averages that sum and multiplies it by only five days a week for fifty weeks, it translates into well over 1,000 scudi a year, just what I estimated for some artists mentioned above. That was ten to twenty times as much as a mason made and a lot more than the 300 scudi a university professor might have been paid in a year, or the 216 scudi a doctor aboard a papal galley collected. (72) The going minimum rate for an altarpiece in new St. Peter's was 800 scudi, the same as a canon of the basilica received annually. Painters' incomes apparently overshadowed those of musicians, at least to judge from the 72 scudi a year that Girolamo Frescobaldi was paid in 1608 when hired as an organist for St. Peter's, although by the 1630s he could afford to pay 60 scudi a year for an apartment for his family and a ser vant. At the time, musicians working for the Barberini were paid anywhere between 3 and 15 scudi a month, though, like Frescobaldi as an organist, they probably had additional income from other jobs around town. (73) Had one of the Barberini's musicians wanted to buy even a copy of a painting by Caravaggio, it might have taken a month's salary, for Mancini relates that such copies at the time cost 15 scudi apiece. (74)
Little attention has been paid to the cost of making paintings, which affected artists' net earnings. Typically, only ultramarine blue, like scaffolding for frescoes, was negotiated apart from an artist's fee, with the patron paying extra for its use as it was so expensive. In Rome in 1631, it went for as much as 50 scudi an ounce, which tallies with statements by two English miniaturists. Around 1600 Nicholas Hilliard wrote that the best ultramarine cost over 11 pounds an ounce, and in 1635 John Hoskins said it fetched 10 pounds an ounce. (75) In an itemized list of the money that Orazio Gentileschi had received from King Charles I between 1627 and 1629 for "colors, blue, canvases, and models," the "azzurro oltramarino" singled out cost eight times as much as all of the other pigments put together. Nor is it surprising that some of Artemisia Gentileschi's goods were sequestered in Florence because she had not paid for one and a half ounces of ultramarine she had been given for painting a Hercules for the gra nd duke of Tuscany. (76) Like all painters, she undoubtedly knew how to make ultramarine go a long way by mixing it with white and glazing it over cheaper pigments. Still, a large altarpiece such as Orazio's Circumcision (Ii Gesu, Ancona) might have needed three ounces of the precious mineral. (77)
Orazio did not say what he spent on linseed oil, which he could have bought for five or six pence a pint, or on his canvas and stretchers, but they were not very costly in relation to artists' fees. Rubens, for instance, by using a recycled stretcher for his altarpiece in Fermo measuring about 10 by 6 1/2 feet (as mentioned above, he was paid 200 scudi for the painting), spent only 8 giuli; even a new stretcher would have cost only 2 scudi. (78) Other stretchers were more expensive, whether because of the quality of the wood or the carpenter. For Valentin's slightly bigger Allegory of Italy of 1627-28, the Barberini spent 8 1/2 scudi, which corresponds to what a carpenter was paid for comparable stretchers for altarpieces in St. Peter's by Poussin, Caroselli, Passignano, and Spadarino, among others. (79)
The canvas and stretcher for Guercino's late, equally large Virgin and Child Appearing to Saint Jerome proved to be a comparative bargain, costing only 41/2 scudi. For two other altarpieces measuring about 10 by 61/2 feet each, Guercino was paid 320 scudi in 1632 and given another 40 scudi for the ultramarine and canvas. (80) Valentin, for his much more modest Samson, was paid only 25 scudi in 1630, with 5 more to cover the cost of the canvas and pigments. (81) In Venice that year, some canvas cost only a fourth of a scudo a meter. (82)
In light of this and kindred data, I would estimate that when painters personally paid for stretchers, canvas, and pigments--ultramarine excepted-they spent no more than about 5 to 10 scudi a picture, depending on its size and complexity.
Artists had additional, indirect costs, notably, the overhead of running a studio. When Orazio Gentileschi itemized his expenses in England, he said he had not kept track of the cost of hiring male and female models ("non ce n'e conto preciso"). (83) Bernini remarked that a good model in his youth could earn 15 scudi a month, a handsome sum for semiskilled labor. (84) In one of her letters of 1649 to Don Antonio Ruffo, Artemisia Gentileschi insisted with regard to a pair of pictures, "I want five hundred ducats for both...these are paintings with nude figures requiring very expensive female models [figure ignude et femine di grandissimo stipendio], which is a big headache. When I find good ones, they fleece me 85 Twenty-five years later, it was questioned whether, at 8 scudi a month, it was worth the cost of hiring a model for the few students studying at the Florentine academy in Rome. Such concerns show how cost-effective making replicas must have been for an artist like Orazio Gentileschi, who reported ly used one model for forty days, three to four times a week, to paint a Saint Jerome. (86)
Models and the expense of any unusual props aside, the cost of running a painter's shop in early seventeenth-century Italy probably was not great, given that an artist's lodgings typically doubled as a studio and that assistants' salaries were low, at least to judge from the small wage an apprentice, Mario Trotta, received for assisting Orazio Gentileschi and Tassi. In 1612 Trotta testified, "I have worked with them at Monte Cavallo this winter on a daily basis and they gave me three giuli a day [ho lavorato a giornate con loro a Monte Cavallo quest'inverno et mi davano tre giulii il giorno]." (87) Similar testimony comes from an otherwise unknown Spaniard, Cristoforo Orlandi, who in 1598 arrived in Rome on horseback with 20 scudi in his pocket to pursue a career in painting. After working awhile for a "painter in the Campo Marzio known as Vittorio [pittore in Campo Marzo chiamato Vittorio]," he was taken on by the established painter Antiveduto Gramatica at the rate of 25 baiocchi a day. A few years later O rlandi made 8 scudia month working independently. In 1606, he stated that for the past three years he had been living in the service of a cardinal-patron for a monthly stipend of 4 scudi, plus 1 giulio a day for food. (88)
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