Prices Paid for Italian Pictures in the Stuart Age

Early collectors of Italian paintings were able to buy pictures quite cheaply, direct from the Italian market. When growing competition from enthusiastic purchasers forced prices up, it remained possible to buy collections in bulk and strike excellent bargains. The shrewdness of Caroline connoisseurs was amply confirmed by the results of the Commonwealth sales. Collectors of the later Stuart period were no doubt less discriminating than their predecessors, but they still insisted on value for money. By the end of the seventeenth century the lineaments of the modern art market had already emerged in England. It was in their patronage of contemporary artists invited to England that Stuart art lovers paid excessive prices, probably because those Italian artists — nowgenerally considered second-rate — enjoyed rarity value.

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