Scrambling for scudi: notes on painters' earnings in early Baroque Rome
Art Bulletin, The, June, 2003 by Richard E. Spear
Continued from page 6.
(35.) Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 419.
(36.) Keith Andrews, "The Elsheimer Inventory and Other Documents," Burlington Magazine 114 (1972): 599. Late in 1580, Michel de Montaigne rented lodgings in the Campo Marzio opposite S. Lucia della Tinta for 20 scudi a month, in which he was "well accommodated with three handsome bedrooms, dining room, larder, stable, and kitchen," plus a "cook and fire for the kitchen," from his "Travel Journal," in The Complete Writings of Montaigne, trans. D. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), 936.
(37.) Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, ed. Giampietro Zanotti et al. (Bologna: Guidi all'Ancora, 1841), vol. 2, 14.
(38.) Riccardo Bassani and Fiora Bellini, "La casa, le 'robbe,' lo studio del Caravaggio a Roma: Due documenti inediti del 1603 e del 1605," Prospettiva 71 (1993): 75 n. 14. The authors' claim that it was Caravaggio who in 1603 rented a rather large house in the Campo Marzio near the Palazzo di Firenze for 40 scudi a year has been contested by Sandro Corradini, "Nuove e false notizie sulla presenza del Caravaggio a Roma," in Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio: La vita e le opere attraverso i documenti, ed. Stefania Macioce (Rome: Logart, 1996), 75. For discussion of where artists lived in the city, see Gian Ludovico Masetti Zannini, Pittori della seconda meta del cinquecento in Roma (Rome: De Luca, 1974), xxx-xxxiii; and Donatella Sparti, La case di Pietro da Cortona (Rome: Fratelli Palombi, 1997), 25-29; and for much higher rental rates of palaces, partial or entire, see Ferraro, 418-26, as well as Ferraro's chap. 9 regarding overall purchase and rental prices of Roman real estate, from palaces to merchants' shops.
(39.) See the data published by Massimo Petrocchi, Roma nel seicento (Bologna: Cappelli, 1970), 176-79.
(40.) Ago, 86.
(41.) For discussion of the cost of wheat, see Braudel and Spooner (as in n. 22), 392-96 and passim, as well as their methodological overview of how to interpret prices, 374-486.
(42.) Jacques Revel, "A Capital City's Privileges: Food Supplies in Early-Modern Rome," in Food and Drink in History, trans. Elborg Forster and Patricia Ranum, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 37-49 (39, for the relative cost of pasta).
(43.) Romani (as in n. 12), 221; and Delumeau, 177ff., on Jubilee year prices. On the types, quantities, and consumption of wine in Rome, see Revel (as in n. 42), 45-46.
(44.) Although meat remained a relatively minor part of the European diet until the 19th century, more was consumed in Rome than in other Italian cities (Nussdorfer [as in n. 15], 29, 31). See Revel (as in n. 42), 42-44, on the meat supply in Rome.
(45.) Montaigne (as in n. 36), 954.
(46.) See Petrocchi (as in n. 39), 176-79, drawing on archival data from the congregation of S. Onofrio (the Roman unit of weight he cites, the libbra, equaled .339 kg).
(47.) See Giovanni Vigo, "Real Wages of the Working Class in Italy; Building Workers' Wages (14th to 18th Century)," Journal of European Economic History 3 (1974): 390, regarding supplemental rations, Ago, 8-9, states that a specialized worker earned about 3 scudi a month.
(48.) Cipolla, 23-24; and Vigo (as in n. 47), 381-82. Domenico Sella, in Salari e lavoro nell'edilizia lombarda durante il secolo XVII (Pavia: Fusi, 1968), concluded that a skilled mason with a family of four in 17th-century Milan spent a third of his salary on bread. See Nussdorfer (as in n. 15), 28-29, regarding the one-baiocco loaf of brown wheat bread and for the surprising view that food in Rome was "relatively cheap." For further discussion of the complex task of computing real wages on the basis of historical prices and wages (with additional references), see Jan de Vries, "Between Purchasing Power and the World of Goods: Understanding the Household Economy in Early Modern Europe," in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), 85-132, esp. 89-98, but with no reference to Italy.
(49.) Cipolla, 28-29. Their fame as patrons notwithstanding, only 1.5 percent of the Borghese's expenditure went toward paintings and sculpture (Goldthwaite [as in n. 8], 26).
(50.) For these and other related incomes, see Delumeau, 441, 455-56, 461-63; Hammond (as in n. 18), 3-8; Wright (as in n. 21), 77; and Ferraro, 246-68, with charts of the annual incomes of some of Rome's noble families. For analysis of data regarding huge papal donations to family members, see Ferraro, 1063-1108. Also see Reinhard (as in n. 19), 335-36, and esp. his richly documented Papstfinanz und Nepotismus unter Paul V. (1605-1621) (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1974). See, too, Reinhardt (as in n. 2), 89; and, mostly for later data, Markus Volkel, Romische Kardinalshaushalte des 17. Jahrhunderts: Borghese-Barberini-Chigi (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1993).
(51.) Wright (as in n. 21), 77.
(52.) Ferraro, 255, 1113; and Delumeau, 46-1, on Roman merchants.
(53.) All of these payments are recorded in Mia Cinotti, Michelangelo Merisi detto il Caravaggio (Bergamo: Bolis, 1983).
(54.) Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), vol. 1, 458.
(55.) Romani (as in n. 12), 139 n. 184, citing the estimate by A. Fanfani.
(56.) Mancini, 239.
(57.) Louise Rice, The Altars and Altarpieces of New St. Peter's (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 206.
(58.) Andrea Emiliani, Federico Barocci (Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1985), vol. 2, 377-85, 361-64, 307-15, respectively.
(59.) Mancini, 251, remarks on the high prices paid for Manfredi's work. For the estates of Poussin, Cortona, and Bernini, see Donatella Sparti, "Appunti sulle finanze di Nicolas Poussin," Storia dell'Arte 79 (1993): 343.
(60.) Pierre Cerin-Jean has created a database of art prices (paintings, sculptures, tapestries, and objects) in the Italian art market between 1470 and 1750, which I have not consulted; see his essays "Recherches sur la signification economique des prix des oeuvres d'art: La facon dont se formaient ceux des peintures et les hierarchies qui en resultent," in Cavaciocchi (as in n. 1), and "Prices of Works of Art and Hierarchy of Artistic Value on the Italian Market (1400-1700)," in Fantoni et al. (as in n. 1). See, too, Olivier Bonfait, "Le prix de la peinture a Bologne aux XVIIe at XVIIIe siecles," also in Cavaciocchi; of these titles, I have read only an abstract of Gerin-Jean's latter paper.
(61.) For an extended discussion of investment instruments in Rome (censi, cambi, compagnie d'uffizi, monti), see Ferraro, 329-93. Interest rates on moats issued during the years under consideration in this essay generally were about 5 to 6 percent (rates declined throughout the century, and the resale value of shares [luoghi] naturally fluctuated according to economic conditions). On the investment advantages of monti, see Ferraro, 823-28. Giovanni Lanfranco complained to Ferrante Carlo about the low yield of his luoghi di monte, in letter 113, dated Apr. 19, 1641, published by G. Bottari, Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura...., reprinted in Giovanni-Pietro Bernini, Lanfranco (Parma: Centro Studi della Val Baganza, 1982), 336. For discussion of one artist's purchases and sales of luoghi di monti, see Olivier Michel, 'La fortune materielle de Poussin," in Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665); Acles da colloque organise au Musee du Louvre 1994 (Paris: Musee du Louvre, 1996), vol. 1, 25-33; as well as Sparti (as in n. 59 ), 344 n. 8.
(62.) Ago, 38, on shopkeepers' credit risks; and, for Artemisia's letter, dated Mar. 13, 16-19, Vincenzo Ruffo, "Galleria Ruffo del secolo XVII in Massina," Bollettino d'Arte 10 (1916): 49.
(63.) For the data from which these figures have been calculated, see Il libro dei conti del Guercino, 1629-1666, ad. Barbara Ghelfi (Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1997); as well as Richard E. Spear, "Guercino's 'Prix-Fixe': Observations on Studio Practices and Art Marketing in Emilia," Burlington Magazine 136 (1994): 592-602. It should be noted that Guercino's Libro dei conti allows the rare opportunity to study the cash flow from his patrons, balance his annual receipts against household expenses, and estimate his annual production (in peak years he painted fifteen to twenty canvases). For brief discussion of these issues, which fall outside the chronology of this essay, see Richard E. Spear, introduction to Seeing Double; Two Versions of Guercino's "Joseph and Potiphar's Wife," exh. cat., Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Fla., 1999, 5.
(64.) This estimate assigns only 75 scudi per easel painting, 200 per altarpiece, and 300 for each of the decorative projects. For a summary of payments to Domenichino, see Richard E. Spear, Domenichino (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), vol. 1, 18-19.
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