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Scrambling for scudi: Notes on painters' earnings in early Baroque Rome
Spear, Richard. The Art Bulletin 85.2 (Jun 2003): 310-320,228.

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Abstract

This essay compares the earnings of various painters included in the recent exhibition The
Genius of Rome with wages of common workers, incomes of the middle and wealthy classes,
and the cost of living in Rome, particularly the basic expenses of food and rent. The criteria
for pricing paintings, which usually were negotiated in scudi, and the cost of making paintings
also are discussed. The results suggest that the established painters from the time of
Caravaggio and the Carracci until the election of Urban VIII (1623) belonged to a surprisingly
lucrative profession. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
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Full Text

Headnote
This essay compares the earnings of various painters included in the recent exhibition The
Genius of Rome with wages of common workers, incomes of the middle and wealthy classes,
and the cost of living in Rome, particularly the basic expenses of food and rent. The criteria
for pricing paintings, which usually were negotiated in scudi, and the cost of making paintings
also are discussed. The results suggest that the established painters from the time of
Caravaggio and the Carracci until the election of Urban VIII (1623) belonged to a surprisingly
lucrative profession.
Long snubbed by art historians as an ill-matched couple, art and economics have enjoyed a
good relationship lately, especially at international conferences where no one thinks that talk
about money sullies art.1 Much of the growing interest in the economics of early Italian
painting focuses on the demand rather than the supply side of exchange, because
throughout the Renaissance and most of the seventeenth century a system of elite
patronage, particularly in Rome, curbed the development of an open market in which the
artist rather than the buyer initiated production.2 Given its premier standing in Italian studies
and its unusually rich archives, Renaissance Florence has received much more attention
than any other Italian city (Venice being a distant second), but even then rarely have artists'
earnings been the subject of discussion.3 The economics of painters working in seventeenth-
century Rome has been little examined, despite the groundwork laid by Francis Haskell in his
pioneering book on Italian Baroque patronage.4
The focus of this essay was determined by a simple yet neglected question raised by the
recent exhibition The Genius of Rome: 1592-1623 (held at the Royal Academy of Arts,
London, in 2001): What can be said about the socioeconomic status of the artists included in
the exhibition? More specifically, how did their earnings compare with those of the larger
Roman population, and what would their payments have bought at the time? For instance,
when Giulio Mancini, Caravaggio's early biographer, reports with dismay that the artist, newly
settled in Rome, was paid only 1 1/2 scudi for his Boy Bitten by a Lizard and only 8 scudi for
his Fortune-Teller5-an account invariably cited in the literature but without analysis-what did
those sums mean? As I hope to show, notwithstanding their frequent complaints about
money and the post-Romantic notion of the starving artist coping with life from a garret, the
painters who established a reputation in Rome, including the protobohemian Caravaggio,
belonged-or, if they knew how to manage their money, should have belonged-to the
economic elite.
To seek a conclusion by analyzing data sampled from payments to various artists in The
Genius of Rome can be justified on two accounts, regardless of the economic variables
mentioned below. First, most of the leading painters in the papal capital from the time of
Caravaggio and the Carracci until the election of Urban VIII in 1623 were represented in the
exhibition, even if their assistants, other minor painters, and the failed hopefuls who
disappeared from record, of course, were not. Hence this essay, conceived as a bozzetto for
correction and enlargement, is limited to successful painters at work in early-seventeenth-
century Rome.6
Second, the period from around 1590 to 1623 saw relative economic stability in Italy. It
coincided with a leveling off of growth and inflation and preceded a gradual but serious
economic decline due to weaknesses in Italy's export markets, the availability of less
expensive foreign goods, especially textiles, stiff maritime competition, foreign protectionism,
high labor costs, and resistance to technological change.7 But just as Rome's economy
suffered less than the maritime, textile, and agricultural economies of Venice, Genoa,
Florence, and Naples,8 so Rome's artists remained in demand because, as of yet, there
were no substitutes for their high-quality goods. Thus, for this study-in-progress it is fair to
say that both prices and wages in the city, like its population of about 110,000, essentially
held steady from the 1590s to the 1620s.
Prior to discussing paintings and prices, not just of pictures but also of bread and eggs, it
should be stressed that Rome's economy was unusual, given that it neither produced nor
manufactured many goods (and therefore was less vulnerable to the economic pressures just
mentioned). The papal city was instead more dependent on luxury services provided by
artists and artisans (particularly jewelers and goldsmiths), booksellers, tailors, hotel keepers,
and, especially, bankers and the legal profession, including notaries, and many wine
merchants and prostitutes, too.9 Nor were Rome's residents typical. Nearly 60 percent were
male, about half of whom worked in a trade or profession.10 In 1603 there were 1,241 priests
and 4,512 monks and nuns living in the city, 5.5 percent of the total population.11
Pilgrims and tourists added considerably to the number of residents. More than a half million
pilgrims traveled to Rome during the Jubilee of 1600, five times the city's permanent
population.12 Not only did they make charitable donations and spend money on goods and
services, but also their periodic stays prompted costly public works. Another thirty thousand
tourists visited the city annually, supporting an unusually large number of hotels.13 In 1622,
Rome's residents and visitors could buy from 5,600 shops that employed twenty-four
thousand of the city's inhabitants, among which (in 1625) were sixteen "rivenditori di colori,"
that is, sellers of pigments.14
Dominating this economic activity was the court of the Church, with its wealthy Curia and
extended bureaucracy, which formed the backbone of the client-based, or demand-driven,
patronage system. As Giovanni Bottero put it in 1588, would Rome "not be more like a desert
than a city if the Pope held not his residence there? . . . If he . . . spent not a great part of the
revenues of the Church?"15 Furthermore, the monies of the clerical bureaucracy in the
sixteenth century "exceeded, perhaps even doubled, the monies directly controlled by the
papal central government."16 In 1571 the combined revenue from benefices of the College of
Cardinals amounted to a staggering million gold scudi.17 During his papacy (1605-21), Paul
V spent more than 1,200,000 scudi on just four building projects: St. Peter's, the Vatican and
Quirinal palaces, and the Pauline Chapel in S. Maria Maggiore. That was the equivalent of
half the total annual papal income of 2,500,000 scudi.18
It is important to bear such sums in mind, as well as the financial benefits of nepotism and
the nonhereditary structure of the Church, which significantly increased the distribution of
wealth. Time and again artists were dependent, directly or indirectly, on the families whose
fortunes were linked to the papal court.19 They profited from an exceptionally high demand
for art in Rome, thanks to a combination of available money, the need for imagery to support
the intensified cult of Mary and the saints after the Council of Trent, and extensive
opportunities for decoration-more than fifty churches, fifty palaces, and twenty villas had
been built or remodeled in the city during the sixteenth century.20 By 1630, there were some
one hundred religious houses.21
Prices in Rome typically were quoted in gold or silver scudi or their fractions (a gold scudo
was worth about 1.3 times a silver scudo during the period under consideration), although
actual payments frequently took the form of goods or a combination of goods and cash. For
uniformity, the silver scudo romano, which was divided into 10 giuli and 100 baiocchi and
contained about thirty-two grams of silver, is used throughout this essay (its value against the
gold scudo declined approximately 14 percent from around 1590 until 1625).22
Estimating the annual incomes of laborers is problematic because their wages often were
seasonal, making it difficult to determine how many days an agricultural or building worker
(those for whom we have the best data) was employed. For comparative purposes I have
taken 250 days of annual work as a model, though it might err by being too high, given the
inevitability of bad weather, slack demand, and the large number of holidays at the time (in
1595 in Lombardy, for example, there were 96 holy days a year).23
Many of the issues of concern here were raised by Peter Paul Rubens in a letter he sent to
the duke of Mantua's secretary in mid-1606, wherein he complained about money. He said
that, while he had received his stipend from the duke for his first four months in Rome,
now the time has passed, and the salary is already in arrears for four more months. . . . I beg
you to intercede for me before His Most Serene Highness, so that it may please him to
continue the same favor towards me. Then I can carry on my studies without having to turn
elsewhere for resources-which would not be lacking in Rome.
Rubens's monthly allowance was 25 scudi. Four months later the artist wrote again,
expressing his dismay that the duke wanted him to return to Mantua right away. That was
impossible, he explained,
because of some important works which . . . I was forced to accept out of pure necessity,
after having devoted all the summer to the study of art. For I could not furnish and suitably
maintain a house with two servants for the period of one year in Rome on the mere 140
crowns [scudi] which I have received from Mantua during my entire absence.
"Therefore," he went on to say, "when the finest and most splendid opportunity in all Rome
presented itself, my ambition urged me to avail myself of the chance. It is the high altar of the
new church of the Priests of the Oratory, called Sta. Maria in Vallicella," or the Chiesa
Nuova.24
The fathers of the Chiesa Nuova had been offered 300 scudi by the papal banker Jacomo
Serra to help fund the commission, whose total budget was 450 scudi, but Serra made the
proviso that Rubens be chosen, or his gift might be withdrawn. Probably to show the padri
what he could do, Rubens painted the picture now in Berlin.25
Rubens got the job, but with the understanding that he would donate 200 scudi to the church.
It was further agreed that he would pay for the materials, and that after the work was
completed two experts would decide if he deserved a bonus. As Michael Jaffe noted,
Rubens's "readiness to advance toward a contract on such a basis is the measure of his
determination to obtain the commission."26
The agreement was revised, with Rubens's donation reduced to 50 scudi, so he stood to
make 400. But the finished altarpiece, evaluated by the experts at 800 scudi, was rejected for
complex reasons.27 It meant that Rubens had to redo the altarpiece at his own expense and
add two lateral paintings. For those he received an additional 200 scudi each, which was
lucky, since the new altarpiece was evaluated as being worth only 350 scudi instead of 800,
thus deserving no bonus. The artist at least was excused from contributing 50 scudi to the
church.
Rubens nevertheless made more money than he had in 1601-2 when, recently arrived in
Italy, he painted three pictures for S. Croce in Gerusalemme and was paid no more than 200
scudi. Evidently, by the time of the Chiesa Nuova commission his reputation commanded
better pay-or, simply, more money was available. For his contemporaneous altarpiece of
1608 in Fermo, he received 200 scudi. Four years earlier, the much more famous Federico
Zuccaro had negotiated a deal with the same congregation. He said that his altarpiece of the
Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence should cost 600 scudi, but he proposed giving half of his fee as
a contribution, although in the end he also settled for 200 scudi.28
What can such documents tell us about the financial life of artists in early seicento Rome and
their socioeconomic status? What would the 200 scudi that Rubens or Zuccaro earned per
picture buy? From what perspective did the twenty-nine-year-old Rubens complain that 140
scudi a year was inadequate for his expenses, which included two servants?
To have a domestic servant (in distinction to studio assistants) was a sign of financial
success, as is evident from the testimony at the trial of Agostino Tassi for the rape of
Artemisia Gentileschi. Orazio Gentileschi's neighbor told the court, "I know that he never has
had a servant, that Gentileschi was truly a poor man [so che non ha tenuto mai servitore che
veramente il Gentileschi era povero huomo]," in part, it seems, because whenever he had
money he spent it lavishly.29 Fewer than half of the families in Florence in 1551 had any
servants at all; 23 percent had one servant; 18 percent had two to five; and 5 percent had
more than five.30 To judge by that measure, Rubens enjoyed an elevated style of living, at a
luxurious level for a single man. Artemisia Gentileschi also employed two servants in Rome
in 1623, but they were probably more a necessity for a separated, working mother. Two
years later one of her servants went to court claiming 30 scudi in back pay, although
Artemisia got off with a 20 scudi settlement.31
Rent in Italian cities was high in relation to wages, resulting in terrible crowding of the needy.
About 15 percent of Rome's population was miserably destitute and dependent on charity for
survival.32 As many as two-thirds of Italian heads of households, including those workers
who lived in prosperous cities like Rome, had to resort to charity sometime during their
lives.33 A writer observed in 1601, "In Rome one sees only beggars, and they are so
numerous that it is impossible to walk the streets without having them around."34
It is not known how much Rubens paid for rent, but the cost of living in Rome probably
justified his complaint. Around the time of his letters, the Gentileschi's tenant and faithless
chaperon of Artemisia, Tuzia, with her husband spent 18 scudi a year for just two rooms
upstairs in the house where the Gentileschi lived in the parish of S. Spirito in Sassia.35 In
1609, Adam Elsheimer signed a lease for lodgings in the Campo Marzio that cost 60 scudi
annually.36 A few years later, the Borghese gave Guido Reni, in addition to his monthly
stipend of 9 scudi plus bread, wine, and firewood, an allowance of 50 scudi a year for rent.37
These figures correspond well with summaries based on notarial data. They indicate that rent
in the cheaper quarters of Rome was about 12 scudi a year, a bit more in the Via Giulia, from
25 to 30 scudi in the area of the Via della Scrofa, and in the fancy zone-then as now, the
streets near the Trinita del Monti (Condotti, Frattina, Babuino, the Corso), where many artists
lived-rents were about 35 to 40 scudi a year, peaking at 100.38
Like rent, food was not cheap in Rome.39 In 1613 a thirty-eight-year-old merchant spent 70
scudi a year to eat.40 Around 1600, wheat cost more in the papal city than almost anywhere
else in Europe, 4 to 5 baiocchi per kilogram. Adult wheat consumption was about a rubbio
(roughly eight bushels) a year, meaning that an adult's annual expense on bread alone came
to about 10 scudi.41 Pasta was a luxury food, costing three times as much as ordinary
bread.42 Eggs fetched a baiocco a dozen in 1600. Ordinary wine was priced at 3 to 4
baiocchi a liter, the equivalent of 20 percent of a field worker's daily wage, and due to
scarcity during Jubilee years its price, like that of hotel rooms and bread, skyrocketed.
Nonetheless, per capita wine consumption in Rome was high, about two hundred liters a
year.43 In 1613 a pair of shoes cost 50 baiocchi, or two days' earnings for a worker. Fish
could be expensive: 24 baiocchi a kilo in 1615, the same price as for a pair of cocks. Beef
and lamb were cheaper, roughly 9 baiocchi a kilo in the mid-1620s,44 maybe because, as
Michel de Montaigne complained, in Rome "their mutton is no good and is held in scant
esteem," whereas "fish are less abundant than in France . . . pike especially is no good at all,
and they leave it for the people," while barbel and dorados were excellent and costly.45
Such prices were dauntingly high for the great majority of Romans.46 During 1605-7, a field
worker made between 15 and 22 baiocchi a day, or about 50 scudi a year; a muratore, or
skilled mason, earned 35 baiocchi a day in 1624, that is, about 85 scudi annually; in 1627 a
tailor made half as much; a soldier at Castel Sant'Angelo, like a Swiss guard, made 48 scudi
a year, though an extra 15 to 20 percent should be added onto laborers' wages to take into
account their supplemental food rations.47
Thus, an ordinary worker spent roughly three-quarters of his income on food, of which a third
was for bread, leaving little for rent, clothing, and heat.48 To buy an easel painting by a
contemporary artist of standing was beyond consideration, for it would have cost more than a
year's income.
For the rich, on the other hand, housing, food, and clothing, like art, were traditional signs of
status. In 1576-77, 34 percent of the Odescalchi family's expenditures on consumer goods
went for food, 27 percent for housing, 10 percent for servants' wages, and 8 percent for
clothing. Strikingly, despite their high style of living, they were able to save 80 percent of their
income.49
During the years represented by The Genius of Rome, the leading cardinal-patrons of art
were very wealthy. Odoardo Farnese, for example, in 1593 had an income of 60,000 scudi; in
1600 Pietro Aldobrandini, from his annual income of 40,000 scudi, spent 5,000 scudi on one
banquet for fifteen hundred guests; as soprintendente dello stato ecclesiastico, Scipione
Borghese was paid 405 scudi a month, and that was just the start of what he could reap as
papal nephew. In 1612 he earned 140,000 scudi; from 1605 to 1633 he acquired an
astonishing 6.5 million scudi. Paul V gave his family more than a million scudi simply as
gifts.50
Certainly, not all cardinals were that rich (one estimate of the income required for a cardinal
living in Rome during the first decade of the seventeenth century was about 8,000 scudi a
year),51 although just the annual ecclesiastical incomes of nearly one hundred late sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century cardinals tabulated by Richard Ferraro average more than 20,000
scudi. Even relatively "poor" cardinals-Cesare Baronio, and Felice Peretti before becoming
pope-enjoyed incomes of about 5,000 scudi a year, while Antonio Barberini the Elder,
although a Capuchin, had an annual allowance of more than 30,000 scudi. Some very
wealthy Roman merchants also earned as much as 40,000 to 50,000 scudi a year.52
Where, in this broad picture, do the successful painters of Rome fit? When Mancini wrote
that Caravaggio received only 1 1/2 scudi for his Boy Bitten by a Lizard and 8 scudi for his
Fortune-Teller, the author wants us to be shocked at such low prices. They were, but only if
compared with Caravaggio's later earnings: 400 scudi for his two lateral paintings in the
Contarelli Chapel and another 150 for its altarpiece; 300 for his two pictures in the Cerasi
Chapel; 125 scudi for The Taking of Christ; 150 scudi for The Supper of Emmaus (London);
probably 280 for The Death of the Virgin; and 400 for The Seven Acts of Mercy. Apparently,
he earned his highest fees, 1,000 scudi, for his Nativity and Resurrection of Lazarus in
Messina. He reportedly turned down an offer of 6,000 scudi to fresco a loggia for the Doria in
Genoa.53
By different standards, however, even those early sums of 1 1/2 and 8 scudi were by no
means meager. Fernand Braudel estimates that in the Mediterranean economy of the
sixteenth century, less than 20 scudi a year was a subsistence wage; between 20 and 40 a
small income; and from 40 to 150 quite "reasonable."54 A family of five in Rome around 1600
could live modestly on 90 scudi a year.55 So if one imagines that those two early paintings
by Caravaggio represented roughly a month's work, they would translate into over 100 scudi
a year, a very "reasonable" income by prevailing standards, especially for a young single
person, though the cost of making paintings, as discussed below, must be taken into
account.
Fees paid to other artists of note, no matter how varied, sustain the conclusion that they were
extremely high when compared with what most Romans were making. In 1603, for example,
Pomarancio received 200 scudi for a painting at S. Gregorio Magno, which, in view of the
payments previously cited, seems to have been a typical rate for altarpieces in Rome. A
decade later, Paul V Borghese tried to satisfy one of the most temperamental of artists,
Guido Reni, by paying him 40 scudi a week to work for him. At the time, Domenichino earned
240 scudi for his first altarpiece, the Last Communion of Saint Jerome, dated 1614.
Some payments were significantly higher, whether because of the size and complexity of a
work, the artist's demand, an appraiser's judgment, or the budget at hand. For his Martyrdom
of Saint Agnes, thanks to Reni's evaluation, Domenichino was paid 1,200 scudi. In 1615 the
famous and aging Cavaliere d'Arpino earned 750 scudi for his Coronation of the Virgin in the
Chiesa Nuova. Mancini, in fact, remarked on d'Arpino's wealth, especially his fancy clothes
and sumptuous studio.56 In the mid-1620s, when the Congregation of St. Peter's hired Reni
to paint an altarpiece for its basilica, it agreed to the unusual terms of a 400-scudi down
payment plus 300 scudi monthly for four months, making a commitment of 1,600 scudi.57
Federico Barocci, like Reni, was one of the most expensive painters in Rome. For his
Eucharist of 1603-7, he received 1,500 scudi. That high fee undoubtedly was influenced by
its many figures, since, at the same point in his career (1604), the artist accepted 300 scudi
for a much simpler Crucifixion (Museo del Prado, Madrid). Barocci had foresight (and
probably tactical cunning) when it came to money. In 1590, writing about a more elaborate
Crucifixion (Genoa Cathedral), he said that he planned to put aside his fee of more than
1,000 scudi for his old age and for taking care of his ailments, which showed no signs of
going away.58
Some of the Caravaggisti were very well paid, too, even those who specialized in modest-
sized easel pictures with half-length figures. During the years shortly before his death in
1622, Bartolomeo Manfredi was receiving from 200 to 400 scudi for his paintings. That is
much more than Nicolas Poussin, newly arrived in Rome, earned in 1626 for his ambitious
Death of Germanicus. But according to Giovan Pietro Bellori, Poussin, with numerous better-
paid later sales, accumulated 15,000 scudi. While that was a lot of money, it pales in
comparison with the 100,000 scudi that Pietro da Cortona left on his death, or with Gian
Lorenzo Bernini's huge estate of 400,000 scudi.59
Other examples of payments could be cited,60 but they would not alter the picture that is
forming: most painters who established a reputation should have been quite well off in Rome-
at least if they did not have extraordinary expenses and knew how to budget and invest their
money, such as in the affordable, generally secure, and readily liquid bonds called monti.61
Moreover, unlike Roman shopkeepers, whose inventories often were worth less than the
outstanding debts due from their clients (because many transactions were on credit), artists
had to invest relatively little in their own goods, so bankruptcy should have been remote. Still,
in one of her many letters complaining about financial difficulties, Artemisia Gentileschi told
Don Antonio Ruffo that because her daughter's recent marriage had been so terribly costly, "I
have very great need for work . . . I am bankrupt [son fallita]."62
For most of the painters under consideration it is difficult to estimate their annual earnings,
even just from their art, because fees for so many of the preserved works are unrecorded,
not to mention those for what is lost. One exception is Guercino, whose finances are
unusually well documented, thanks to his detailed account book, although it had not been
started when he was in Rome (1621-23). During the years it covers, 1629 until his death in
1666, his annual gross income from art fluctuated, peaking briefly at about 4,000 scudi a
year, falling at times to 1,000 scudi, and averaging 1,500. During the 1630s, he spent 57
percent of his income on running his unusually complex household and extended-family
business, for which expenses amounted to about 840 scudi a year. Even in the 1640s, when
Guercino spent large sums on real estate-including 4,250 scudi on his house in Bologna-he
had a 20 percent surplus.63
Guercino's annual income can be compared with what Domenichino earned from his art at
midcareer. Only a rough estimate is possible, yet the result is remarkably consistent with
Domenichino's later average annual income of 2,000 scudi from his commission in the
Cappella del Tesoro di S. Gennaro in Naples (1631-41), during which period he was
contractually bound to take on no other work (yet occasionally did). For the decade of 1616
to 1625, which he spent in Rome, Fano, and Bologna, documented payments for oil paintings
total about 3,000 scudi. He earned another 8,000 scudi from fresco work during the same
period. How much more he was paid for an additional three altarpieces, three decorative
commissions, and approximately thirty easel paintings is unknown, but a very conservative
guess would be another 3,750 scudi, resulting in an average per annum income for the
period 1616-25 of nearly 1,500 scudi.64
Known payments to Caravaggio span the last ten years of his life and total about 4,400
scudi, for seventeen pictures. Approximately forty works from that period are widely accepted
as genuine.65 If one takes 250 scudi as the average recorded payment, the artist would have
earned about 10,000 scudi over ten years, just for the extant paintings. Of course, this is a
very crude estimate, but the results are provocatively in line with Guercino's and
Domenichino's average annual earnings.
Whether one felt rich or poor in Rome, like anywhere else, naturally was relative to one's
social status, profession, sex, and age. Some ordinary Roman residents who said that they
were neither rich nor poor ("non sono ne ricco ne povero"), or maybe poorer than rich ("sono
piu povero, che ricco"), estimated that their total assets were worth anywhere from 400 to
about 1,000 scudi, which is little in comparison with the artists' estates mentioned above or
the annual earnings of Guercino, Domenichino, and Caravaggio, or with Giovanni Lanfranco,
as noted below. An income of 1,000 scudi was considered adequate for a Roman gentleman,
while three to four thousand a year allowed a nobleman "to live an eminently dignified
existence."66
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 servant. 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 grand 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 4 1/2 scudi. For two other
altarpieces measuring about 10 by 6 1/2 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 reportedly 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 Orlandi 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
What determined the price of a painting?89 On what basis did the experts evaluate Rubens's
work for the Chiesa Nuova or did Reni decide that Domenichino's altarpiece was worth 1,200
scudG Mancini is explicit on the appropriate criteria, although he emphasizes that a painting
cannot have a definite value because, for the same object, someone who is rich would pay
more than a collector of modest means, just as someone who is in need would sell at a lower
price. The latter indeed happened regarding Elsheimer's masterpiece, his house altar with
stories of the True Cross. In 1612, two years after Elsheimer died, Agostino Tassi advised
the grand duke of Tuscany to buy the work, which he had seen in the home of a Spaniard in
Rome. Although the painter Ludovico Cigoli thought it was not good enough for the grand
duke's collection, negotiations continued. Seven years later the grand duke was informed
that the Spaniard was in financial trouble and now willing to accept less than the 3,000 scudi
he had hoped to get. By the end of the year the deal was closed, for an unknown but
presumably lowered price.90
Mancini writes that a painting's value or price, which he says the buyer rather than the artist
really determines, is based on the talent and fame of the artist as well as the relative
excellence of the particular work; on the artist's investment of time in learning his trade and in
making the object under consideration (hence, its size and the number of figures counted);
and on its materials. For earlier pictures, their age, rarity, condition, and a dealer's expenses
contributed to their evaluation.91 While all of this sounds very modern, Mancini curiously
omitted a conspicuous factor, subject matter, whose significance undoubtedly increased on
the secondary market after an artist's reputation and demand for his work had been shaped
more nicely. Mancini also stressed that the quality of the patron is significant, as many artists
discovered, for better or worse.
Worse for Annibale Carracci, whose meager payment by the notoriously stingy Odoardo
Farnese for his years of labor in the Farnese Gallery was such a disappointment that it
caused his physical breakdown. But better for Guido Reni, who cleverly manipulated his
market by controlling supply and demand. According to his view, patrons could decide how
much they wanted to spend by choosing from among painters of quite inferior quality ("pittori
piu bassi"), who deserved no more than about 2 or 3 scudi per life-size figure; an ordinary
artist ("pittore ordinario"), who commanded about 15 scudi a figure; and the special
("straordinario") painter, like himself, who was rewarded according to the excellence of the
finished work.92
Reni knew how to profit by not setting prices on his paintings and relying instead on the
magnificence of his wealthy patrons, who, after seeing the works completed, would pay him
more than he would have asked for.93 Guercino, on the other hand, typically prepriced his
pictures on the basis of how many figures they contained-100 scudi per full-length figure, 50
per half-length, and 25 for heads. In a revealing letter to Don Antonio Ruffo, Guercino
cautioned his patron, who did not want to pay the full price for an entire figure, that for his 80
scudi, "you'll get a bit more than a half figure."94
Occasionally painters turned some of their work over to dealers, whose markups could be
substantial. After settling in Bologna, Reni once stooped to working for what Carlo Cesare
Malvasia calls a "shrewd old man" on an hourly basis: 10 scudi an hour, four hours a day,
during which time he would paint two pictures that would be resold for 100 scudi apiece,
netting the dealer 80 scudi each.95 In Rome, Mancini learned that Gerrit van Honthorst "is
well paid, but making room for those who buy to resell and do well with their own
business."96 Another foreigner, Jusepe de Ribera, was in Rome about the same time.
Mancini writes of him that, "having come to Rome, he worked for a daily wage for those who
have workshops and sell paintings through the labors of similar young men." But his loose
way of living ran up such big debts that Ribera had to get out of town. "In truth," Mancini
continues, "one could say he acted slightly in bad faith, because when he wanted to work he
earned five or six scudi a day, so that if his expenses had been normal, he could quickly and
easily have paid everyone."97
At times an artist might adjust his expectations because of rivalry. Malvasia relates that some
of Annibale's first commissions had been offered to Ludovico, but that Ludovico found their
fees unworthy. He passed the work on to his younger cousin, "not so much to give
encouragement and the small financial benefit . . . but to see to it that these commissions
would be a product issuing from their own workshop, so that they would not fall, as did many
others, to their rival Procaccini, and to Fontana, Calvaert, and Passerotti."98
Around 1595, the middleman who was negotiating the price of Ludovico's huge
Transfiguration complained that the Carracci, who usually had been charging only 60 or 70
scudi for their pictures, had raised their prices to bolster their reputation and now asked for
200 scudi. Therefore, he turned to their competitor Prospero Fontana, who said that, while
his usual fee was only half as much, he would take the job at any price. Fontana's
competitive discount notwithstanding, the patron finally gave in to the Carracci.99
One more example concerns Ludovico, who in 1600 demanded 200 scudi for his painting the
Birth of the Baptist. The patron hesitated, whereupon Ludovico's former student Guido Reni
offered to paint the altarpiece for half that price. Not to be outdone, Ludovico countered that
he would match Reni's figure and throw in a small picture for the patron's sister, who was
responsible for making the decision. Ludovico got the job.100
Reni was unusually sensitive and competitive about issues of money. "Why is there this
screaming all of the time about how long I take and how high my prices are?" Malvasia
reports him demanding. "Can one so quickly and easily get a half-figure from Caravaggio?
One pays less for it than one of mine, when in effect he wants twice as much? I did the
Crucifixion of St. Peter at the Tre Fontane for 70 miserable scudi but didn't Cardinal Scipione
give [Caravaggio] 150?"101
Ludovico prefigured Reni in knowing how to maximize and raise prices. He "taught all those
who came after him to get well paid"102-but evidently not his cousin Annibale. Malvasia felt
that the 125 scudi Annibale got for his Madonna of Saint Luke of 1592 was inadequate,
though a better reward than the load of grain and crate of grapes he received the next year
for his Resurrection.103 Malvasia understood that Annibale's brother Agostino, like Ludovico,
was scudi-savvy, and concluded that had Agostino been in Rome to help, Annibale would
have been better paid by Odoardo Farnese, for Agostino "knew how to deal with courtiers
and how to stand his ground with princes."104

As a young man Francesco Albani was financially independent and could risk losing the duke
of Mantua's patronage by asking for 100 scudi a month, plus expenses and fees for his
assistants, on top of payment for individual works.105 Remarking on Albani's privileged birth,
Mancini reported that the painter did not have to rely on daily wages for a living and therefore
he produced less, although he felt that what Albani completed was "of great perfection." He
then posed the question: Is it better for an artist to be "comfortable and rich or poor and
needy [che sia commodo et ricco o ver povero et bisognioso] for his glory and for him to be of
use to the world"? He decided that being comfortable and rich was preferable because
quality, which he linked to good pay and adequate time, is more important than quantity, a
consequence of need.106
Elsheimer undoubtedly agreed. In his drawing The Artist in Despair (Fig. 1), he depicted a
putto (at right) with one arm raised and winged, the other arm weighed down by a stone and
disabled. The image was taken from Andrea Alciati's emblem book (Fig. 2), where it carries
the motto "Poverty hinders the greatest talents from advancing," glossed in its accompanying
legend: "With my talent I could be soaring among the highest peaks, if envious poverty did
not pull me down."107 Regardless of which edition of Alciati Elsheimer consulted,108 the
grim message is clear: poverty clips the wings of artistic creativity.
True or not, from a painter's perspective it is a smart marketing claim, as Artemisia
Gentileschi and probably every artist knew. In 1649 she bluntly wrote to her most important
patron, Don Antonio Ruffo, "I can tell you for certain that the higher the price, the harder will I
strive to make a painting that will please Your Most Illustrious Lordship."109
Footnote
Notes
1. Papers on the economics of Italian Renaissance art far outnumber those on the Italian
Baroque, just as the Dutch art market of the 17th century has been studied in much greater
detail than Italian painting of the same period. see, as representative recent publications with
extensive bibliographies (further titles are cited below), Arnold Esch and Christoph Luitpold
Frommel, eds., Arte, committenza ed economia a Roma nelle corti del Rinascimento (1420-
1530) (Turin: Einaudi, 1995); Michael North, ed., Economic History and the Arts (Cologne:
Bohlau, 1996); Michael North and David Ormrod, eds., Art Markets in Europe, 1400-1800
(Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate, 1998); and, with slightly more attention to later Italian painting,
Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Economia e Arte: Secc. XIII-XVIII (Florence: Le Monnier, 2002),
which was not yet available when this article went to press; and Marcello Fantoni, Louisa
Matthew and Sara Matthews Grieco, eds., The Art Market in Italy (15th-17th Centuries)
(Modena: Panini, in press). Two organizations are especially responsible for promoting the
study of art and economics in Italy: the Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica
"Francesco Datini" in Prato and ICARE (International Center for Art Economics), associated
with the University of Venice, each of which sponsors conferences and publications.
2. See Volker Reinhardt, "The Roman Art Market in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries," in North and Ormrod (as in n. 1), 81-92, who argues that the broad-based system
of Roman nepotism, controlled by a narrow, wealthy upper class, shaped the buyer-based art
market at a time when the middle class was very small. But also see Loredana Lorizzo, "II
mercato dell'arte a Roma nel XVIIo secolo: 'Pittori bottegari' e 'rivenditori di quadri' nei
documenti dell'Archivio Storico dell'Accademia di San Luca," in Fantoni et al. (as in n. 1); I
am familiar only with an abstract of her paper.
3. In the conference "The Art Market in Italy (15th-17th Centuries)" (see n. 1 above), fourteen
papers presented deal specifically with Florence, three with Venice, two each with Bologna
and Rome, and one with Naples. Christopher Marshall's research on Naples uncommonly
focuses more on the artist than the patron. See his "'Senza il minimo scrupolo': Artists as
Dealers in Seventeenth-Century Naples," Journal of the History of Collections 12 (2000): 15-
34; and idem, "Appagare il Pubblico: Public Exhibitions as Promotional Strategies in the
Work of Luca Giordano," in Fantoni et al. (as in n. 1). Aspects of 17th-century patronage in
Venice are discussed in the recent books by Linda Borean, La quadreria di Agostino e
Giovan Donate Correggio nel collezionismo veneziano del seicenlo (Udine: Forum, 2000);
and Isabella Cecchini, Quadri e commercio a Venezia durante il seicento (Venice: Marsilio,
2000). For a study devoted to one artist's wealth (which I have read only in abstract form),
see Rob Hatfield, "The High End: Michelangelo's Income," also in Fantoni et al.
4. Francis Haskell, Painters and Patrons (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963).
5. Mancini, 140. See below for further discussion of the value of these purportedly low
payments.
6. Beverly Brown, ed., The Genius of Rome, 1592-1623, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts,
London, 2001. For discussion of the important painters excluded from the exhibition, see my
review, Richard E. Spear, "Classicism in the Shadows," Times Literary Supplement, Feb. 16,
2001, 18-19. Aversion of this essay was presented at the conference "The Birth of the
Baroque: An Artist's Rome," held at the National Gallery, London, Mar. 23-24, 2001, on the
occasion of the exhibition at the Royal Academy; it is preparatory to a much broader book-
length study on the socioeconomic status of artists in Baroque Italy that Philip Sohm and I
are editing and will address many questions unexamined here, including the economics of
fresco work.
7. Domenico Sella, Italy in the Seventeenth Century (London: Longman, 1997), 35-41.
8. Ibid., chap. 2, provides a good overview of the Italian economy, with copious references,
though Rome is conspicuously neglected. Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for
Art in Italy, 1300-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 29, points out that
economic decline did not necessarily result in a loss of wealth or a decrease in its
accumulation.
9. See Delumeau, 416-32, on Rome's prostitutes (he states that an ordinary prostitute
charged anywhere from 1 to 4 scudi, while a deluxe prostitute was paid as much as 12 scudi,
without clarification of what such distinctions meant with regard to courtesans, who typically
were not paid set fees).
10. Ibid., 422; and Ago, 6.
11. Cipolla, 68. Only Bologna had a higher percentage of clergy and religious (5.7 percent in
1624), but there the proportion of monks and nuns to priests was much higher.
12. See the rich study by Mario Romani, Pellegrini e viaggiatori nell'economia di Roma dal
XIV al XVII secolo (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1948); as well as Delumeau, passim.
13. Delumeau, 142, 186-87. In 1615, he reports, Rome had 360 hotels. The owner of the
most famous one, the Orso, became so rich that he could leave his daughter a dowry of
30,000 scudi (142). Ago, 8, gives the conflicting number of 120 hotels in the 1620s (and 652
osterie).
14. Ago, 6, 8.
15. Giovanni Bottero, quoted in Laurie Nussdorfer, Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 27-28. Determining the budget of the Vatican
is a notoriously difficult problem; for the 17th century, see, among various studies, Georg
Lutz, "Zur Papstfinanz von Klemens IX. bis Alexander VIII. (1667-1691)," Romische Quartal
Schrift fur christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichle 73 (1973): 32-90, esp. the
references in nn. 1-6.
16. Peter Partner, Renaissance Rome, 1500-1559 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1976), 51. The fundamental study of Rome's late Renaissance economy remains Delumeau;
also see Nussdorfer (as in n. 15), chap. 2.
17. Partner (as in n. 16), 56; and Delumeau, 453.
18. Delumeau, 765; and Frederick Hammond, Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 4.
19. See Wolfgang Reinhard, "Papal Power and Family Strategy in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries," in Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility, ed. Ronald G. Asch and
Adolf M. Birke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 329-56; and Reinhardt (as in n. 2). In
his richly documented thesis, Ferraro counts some five hundred titled and untitled noble
Roman families, 20 to 25 percent of whose mature males entered ecclesiastical careers (49-
75, 142).
20. The principal analysis of wealth and demand for art in Renaissance Italy is Goldthwaite
(as in n. 8). See Delumeau, 258-61, 275-76, 358, regarding Rome's new and newly
remodeled buildings.
21. A. D. Wright, The Early Modern Papacy: From the Council of Trent to the French
Revolution, 1564-1789 (Harlow, Eng.: Longman, 2000), 91.
22. Ago, 198-201; Delumeau, 656-88; and, for the gold to silver ratio in Rome from 1560 to
1670, Enrico Stumpo, Il capitale finanziario a Roma fra cinque e seicento (Milan: Giuffre,
1985), 24-29. From around 1610 until the end of the century, silver was gradually devalued in
Europe following a long period when the nominal prices of gold and silver rose at fairly
steady, similar rates. See Fernand Braudel and F. Spooner, "Prices in Europe from 1450 to
1750," in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 4, The Economy of Expanding
Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. E. E. Rich and C. H. Wilson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 378-86.
23. Cipolla, 75.
24. Peter Paul Rubens, The letters of Peter Paul Rubens, Irans, and ed. Ruth Magurn
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), 38-40, nos. 13, 14. Rubens's contract
is published and analyzed by Michael Jaffe in Rubens and Italy (Oxford: Phaidon, 1977), 85-
89, 118-19 n. 14. See, too, Hans Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, pt. 8,
Saints, vol. 2 (London: Phaidon, 1973), 43-50, no. 109.
25. Brown (as in n. 6), 356, no. 137.
26. Jaffe (as in n. 24), 87.
27. See the excellent summary of the reasons in Steven Ostrow, Art and Spirituality in
Counter-Reformation Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 174-80.
28. Jaffe (as in n. 24), 92-94, 119 n. 55.
29. Patrizia Cavazzini, "Appendix 1: Documents Relating to the Trial of Agostino Tassi," in
Christiansen and Mann, 442 (Oct. 21, 1612, fol. 111).
30. Cipolla, 66.
31. Christiansen and Mann, xvii.
32. On the poor of Rome, see Delumeau, 403-16.
33. Sella (as in n. 7), 79 n. 90, with further references.
34. Camillo Fanned, Trattato de lutte l'opere pie. . . . (Rome, 1601), quoted in Cipolla, 12.
35. Mary Garrard, Arlemisia 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, Fekina 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, Piltori della seconda meta del cinquecento in Roma (Rome: De Luca, 1974), xxx-
xxxiii; and Donatella Sparti, La casa 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 snicento (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, 464, on Roman merchants.
53. All of these payments are recorded in Mia Cinotti, Michelangelo Merisi delta 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 Altarpies 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 Gerin-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 stir 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 et 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 monti 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 lluctuated 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 du Poussin," in Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665): Actes du
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, 1649,
Vincenzo Ruffo, "Galleria Ruffo del secolo XVII in Messina," 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, ed. 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 Libra 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 scudiper 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.
65. My figures are based on the data in the catalogues by Mia Cinotti (as in n. 53); and John
Spike, Caravaggio (New York: Abbeville Press, 2001).
66. Ago, 82-89, for discussion of the meanings of ricco and povero; and Ferraro, 244-46, for
estimates of how much income the nobility required.
67. For a brief discussion of Lanfranco's earnings and financial pressures, see Richard E.
Spear, "Colorno, Naples and Rome: Lanfranco," Burlington Magazine 144 (2002): 128
(knowingly or not, Lanfranco underreported Domenichino's earnings in the same letter when
he says that his rival was paid only 18,000 ducats in eleven years).
68. Rubens (as in n. 24), 53-54, no. 21.
69. Joachim von Sandrart, quoted in Keith Andrews, Adam Ekheimer (New York: Rizzoli,
1977), 56 (there is no documentary evidence for Elsheimer's imprisonment).
70. Delumeau, 497-98; and Masetti Zannini (as in n. 38), xxxvii-xxxviii, on artists as debtors,
some of whom also served time in debtor's prison.
71. Werner Sumowski, "'The Artist in Despair": A New Drawing by Adam Elsheimer," Master
Drawings 33 (1995): 152-56. (1 am very grateful to Ann Sutherland Harris for bringing this
drawing to my attention.)
72. Mancini, 141, 250; and Stumpo (as in n. 22), 39-40.
73. Rice (as in n. 57), 14, 162-64 (St. Peter's); and Hammond (as in n. 18), 3, 8 (musicians).
74. I have discussed some of these issues, with further references, in Spear, 1994 (as in n.
63), 592-602, and in idem, The "Divine" Guido: Religion, Sex, Money and Art in the World of
Guido Reni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), chap. 12, "Marketing." On the cost of
copies after Caravaggio, see Michele Maccherini, "Caravaggio nel carteggio familiare di
Giulio Mancini," Prospettiva 86 (1997): 71-92. A similar price (22 scudi) was paid to Carlo
Magnone in 1642 for making two copies after Caravaggio's Cardsharps and Lute Player
(Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art
[New York: New York University Press, 1975], 9, doc. 78).
75. For the cost of ultramarine blue in Rome, see the testimony by Lanfranco regarding
Fabrizio Valguarnera's payments to him in diamonds and ultramarine blue (the painter twice
accepted oltramarino in lieu of cash, at the values of 20 to 30 and 50 scudi an ounce), in
Jane Costello, "The Twelve Pictures 'Ordered by Velasquez' and the Trial of Valguarnera,"
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950): 274. A decade later in Naples,
Lanfranco used three qualities of ultramarine blue for his fresco in the cupola of the Cappella
del Tesoro di S. Gennaro, the best of which he said was evaluated at 12 ducats an ounce
"although it is worth more"; 37 ounces of ultramarine cost the patrons 351 ducats (see Erich
Schleier, ed., Giovanni Lanfranco: Un pittore barocco tra Parma, Roma e Napoli, 2d ed.
[Milan: Electa, 2002], 439-40 [Sept. 11, Nov. 1, 1641, July 29, 1642, and Feb. 23, 16431).
For Hilliard's treatise, see Nicholas Hilliard's Art of Limning, ed. Linda Bradley Salamon
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1983), 33 (Hilliard notes that "the worst which is but
badd" costs 7 1/2 pounds an ounce); and for John Hoskin's pricing, see Edward Norgate,
Miniatura, or, The Art of Limning, ed. Jeffrey M. Muller and Jim Murrell (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1997), 122 n. 32. Around 1650, according to the English antiquary Richard
Symonds, "the best azzurro or Oltramarina is now sold in Rome at 21 crownes [scudi] the
ownce &so downward so that wch. they call cenneri [the lowest grade] are sold at 3 Julios
the ownce [a seventieth as much as the finest grade]. . . . In Engl. (Mr. Sheppard told me
then in Rome) they pay 8 pounds for an ownce"; Symonds, quoted in Mary Beal, A Study of
Richard Symonds (New York: Garland, 1984), 220.
76. For the much lower cost of other pigments in England at the time of Orazio's stay, see
Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, Pictoria sculptoria &quae subalternarum artium, 1620, ed. M.
Faidutti and C. Versini (Lyons: Audin, 1974), 100-101; and, for the sequestering of
Artemisia's goods, Christiansen and Mann, 449, xvi (1620), respectively.
77. This estimate was made for me by Dorothy Mahon, conservator at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York. Both she and Sarah Fisher, conservator at the National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C., calculate that an ounce of ultramarine mixed with oil would fill a
modern medium-size tube of paint. I am very grateful to them and to Jo Kirby in the Scientific
Department of the National Gallery, London, for discussing with me various aspects of artists'
use of ultramarine. For an example of how painters "stretched" ultramarine, see Richard
Symonds's observations on Canini's techniques, in Beal (as in n. 75), 245-55.
78. For the cost of linseed oil, see Mayerne (as in n. 76), 100; regarding Rubens's use of a
secondhand stretcher, see Jaffe (as in n. 24), 92.
79. For Valentin, see Lavin (as in n. 74), 42, doc. 342, Aug. 1628; Rice (as in n. 57), 236,
records the cost as 8 scudi. For Poussin, Caroselli, Passignano, and Spadarino, see Rice,
230, 240, 243, 248, respectively.
80. Il libro del conti del Guercino (as in n. 63), 169-70 (no. 498), 66-67 (no. 53).
81. Lavin (as in n. 74), 43, doc. 345.
82. See the Libretto dei conti del pittore Tiberio Tinelli (1618-1633), ed. Bianca Lanfranchi
Strina (Venice: Il Comitato, 2000), xxxi, though the 180 brama di tela that cost 360 lire
puzzlingly is not cited in the text of the libretto. For some canvas sizes and prices in mid-
17th-century Rome, see Richard Symonds, in Beal (as in n. 75), 293; a tela d'imperatore
measuring 4 by 6 palmi (one palmo equals about 8 3/4 in., or 22.35 cm) cost just half a
scudo.
83. Christiansen and Mann, 449. I have not yet gathered adequate data on the cost of hiring
models. In the later 1620s and earlier 1630s, the Accademia di S. Luca in Rome typically
paid models only 1 scudo 20 baiocchi a month, but for unrecorded hours of work (Ann
Sutherland Harris kindly shared with me records from the academy's archives of payments to
models).
84. Bernini, cited in Paul Freart de Chantelou, Diary of the Cavaliere Bernini's Visit to France,
trans. Margery Corbett, ed. Anthony Blunt and George Bauer (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1985), 35.
85. Ruffo (as in n. 62), 52; and Garrard (as in n. 35), 398, letter 25.
86. Klaus Lankheit, Florentinische Barockplastik (Munich: Bruckmann, 1962), 248, doc. 72,
on the Florentine academy; for Orazio's Saint Jerome, see Christiansen and Mann, 94-96,
no. 16, and esp. Christiansen's essay, "The Art of Orazio Gentileschi," 10 and passim, on
Orazio's extensive use of the model and penchant to make replicas.
87. Cavazzini (as in n. 29), 434, June 23, 1612, fol. 374v.
88. Corradini (as in n. 38), 74.
89. On the problem of pricing art, see Neil De Marchi, introduction to Economic
Engagements with Art, Annual Supplement to vol. 31, History of Political Economy, ed. Neil
De Marchi and Craufurd D. W. Goodwin (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 1-11,
as well as the essay by Toon Van Houdt, "The Economics of Art in Early Modern Times:
Some Humanist and Scholastic Approaches," 303-31 in ibid., with reference to the southern
Netherlands in the early 17th century.
90. Andrews (as in n. 69), 50, doc. 14.
91. Mancini, 9-10, 139-41. See, too, Vincenzio Borghini's discussion of prices and value of
art in the context of the paragons between sculpture and painting, in Paola Barocchi, ed.,
Scritti d'arte del Cinquecento (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1971), vol. 1, 630-35. He insists that
neither the material cost nor the expenditure of time of production matters, but that a work of
art is to be judged by "l'ingegno" it displays.
92. Louisa Ciammitti, "'Questo si costuma ora in Bologna': Una lettera di Guido Reni, aprile
1628," Prospetiva 98-99 (2000): 194-203 (her complex reading of ordinario, however, is not
supported by Reni's or general usage of the time). For a market definition of "il prezzo
ordinario et honesto" in 1573, see Ago, 118-19.
93. On the virtue of magnificentia in distinction to liberalilas, see Guido Guerzoni, "Liberalitas,
Magnificentia, Splendor: The Classic Origins of Italian Renaissance Lifestyles," in De Marchi
and Goodwin (as in n. 89), 332-78.
94. On Reni's and Guercino's contrasting marketing strategies, see Spear, 1994 (as in n. 63);
and idem, 1997 (as in n. 74).
95. Malvasia (as in n. 37), vol. 2, 34.
96. Mancini, 258.
97. Ibid., 249-51; and Craig Feiton, "Ribera's Early Years in Italy: The 'Martyrdom of St.
Lawrence' and the 'Five Senses,'" Burlington Magazine 133 (1991): 81.
98. Anne Summerscale, Malvasia's Life of the Carracci (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2000), 91-92.
99. Andrea Emiliani, ed., cat. by Gail Feigenbaum, Ludovico Carracci, exh. cat., Kimbell Art
Museum, Fort Worth, Tex., 1993, 92, no. 42 (it is uncertain that the full amount of 200 scudi
was paid).
100. Ibid., 123, no, 57.
101. Malvasia (as in n. 37), vol. 2, 16-17 (I am indebted to Donatella Sparti for discussing this
passage with me). It is irrelevant to the gist of Reni's quip that Malvasia misstated
Caravaggio's patron and fee.
102. Summerscale (as in n. 98), 248.
103. Ibid., 158. As remarked above, payment in goods was not uncommon at the time.
104. Ibid., 175.
105. Spear, 1997 (as in n. 74), 214.
106. Mancini, 242.
107. Ellen Perry gave me her expert advice on the text in the Paris edition of Andreae Alciati
Emblematum libellus, 1534, 19; these translations, slightly modified, are taken from
www.mun.ca/alciato/ltext.html. Sumowski (as in n. 71), 156 n. 4, mistranscribed "arces" in the
legend as "araes."
108. Sumowski (as in n. 71), 152, assumes that Elsheimer used the Latin-German edition of
Alciati, which freely renders the explanatory lines of the Latin legend thus: "Mancher ist wol
geborn zu kunst, Die in zu hochen ehren bring, Doch so er arm, ists alls vmb sunst."
109. Garrard (as in n. 35), 396, letter 24; and Ruffo (as in n. 62), 51: ". . . ma dico bene ehe
quanta piu sera alto il prezzo piu sfortiro di fare un quadro per V. S. Ill."^sup ma^ grato."
References
Frequently Cited Sources
Ago, Renata, Economia barocca: Mercato e istituzioni nella Roma del seicenlo (Rome:
Donzelli, 1998).
Cipolla, Carlo, Before the Industrial Revolution, 3d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993).
Delumeau, Jean, Vie economique el sociale de Rome dans la seconde moitie du XVIe siecle
(Paris: E. de Boccard, 1957-59).
Ferraro, Richard J., The Nobility of Rome, 1560-1700: A Study of Its Composition, Wealth,
and Investment (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1994).
Mancini, Giulio, Considerazioni sulla pittura, ed. Adriana Marucchi and Luigi Salerno, vol. 1
(Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1956).
Christiansen, Keith, and Judith Mann, eds., Orazio and Artemisia Genlileschi (New Haven:
Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2001).
AuthorAffiliation
Author of Caravaggio and His Followers, Domenichino, and The "Divine" Guido: Religion,
Sex, Money and Art in the World of Guido Reni, Richard E. Spear most recently published
From Caravaggio to Artemisia: Essays on Painting in Seventeenth-Century Italy and France
(Pindar Press, 2002) [Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland,
College Park, Md. 20742-1335].
_______________________________________________________________

Indexing (details)
Subject Visual artists;
Painting;
Valuation;
Art history
Location Rome Italy
Title Scrambling for scudi: Notes on painters' earnings in early Baroque
Rome
Author Spear, Richard E
Publication title The Art Bulletin
Volume 85
Issue 2
Pages 310-320,228
Publication year 2003
Publication date Jun 2003
Year 2003
Publisher New York
Publisher College Art Association, Inc.
Place of publication New York
Country of publication United States
Journal subject Art
ISSN 00043079
CODEN ABCABK
Source type Scholarly Journals
Language of publication English
Document type Commentary
Subfile Painting, Visual artists, Valuation, Art history
ProQuest document ID 222959216
Document URL http://search.proquest.com/docview/222959216?accountid=15533
Copyright Copyright College Art Association of America Jun 2003
Last updated 2010-06-09
Database ProQuest Central

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