Beyond the Fringe: Painting for the Market in 17th-Century Italy

Opening Remarks
David Freedberg, Columbia University
Nicholas Hall, Nicholas Hall Gallery

Speakers
Sheila Barker, University of Pennsylvania
Wayne Franits, Syracuse University.
Matthew Hargraves, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
John Marciari, Morgan Library & Museum
Caterina Volpi, Sapienza University of Rome
Lara Yeager-Crasselt, Baltimore Museum of Art

This day of study is linked to a loan exhibition curated by the Nicholas Hall gallery (from April 23, 2025), Beyond the Fringe: Painting for the Market in 17th-Century Italy. The speakers will focus on the vibrant art market in Rome (and by extension Naples, Venice, and Bologna) in the 17th century. They will investigate the network of painters carrying out independent work without the constraints of a commission, the collectors driving up the demand, and the dealers sustaining this market. They will touch on the dozens of works in the exhibition drawn from international private collections and public institutions in the United States: portraits, landscapes, still life works, and paintings of mythological, religious and profane subjects.

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This event is in-person only.
Seating is limited and first come, first served. Priority will be given to those who register in advance. Check-in begins 30 minutes before the event and early arrival is suggested.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
While the production, marketing and collecting of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art—well researched through historic inventories and sales records—have translated to several exhibitions in recent years, the same is far from true for the Italian counterpart. Francis Haskell’s Patrons and Painters (1963), a seminal study of art and elite patronage in 17th and 18th-century Italy, continues to shape the general perception of seicento Italian art as being dominated by prestigious commissions and lackluster, compared to the Low Countries, in the production of independent work. It has only come to light in the last 20 years, driven by Patrizia Cavazzini’s seminal research using historic court cases and other written records, that a flourishing primary and secondary art market existed in Italy. While the transactions between painters and collectors were complicated and somewhat underground, works painted on spec still made their way, typically through an intermediary dealer, into prominent collections, such as that of Cardinal del Monte, Scipione Borghese, and Olympia Pamphilj. This aspect of the art market is less familiar to the English-speaking general audience due to the sparse number of studies and absence of exhibitions.
Focusing on paintings made in Italy in the 1600s, this exhibition will be an unprecedented study of the art market mechanism and a probe into the "popular taste." In many cases the artists were young or foreign painters at the beginning of their careers. The paradigm of this was Caravaggio, who came to Rome at the end of the 16th century and built up a reputation, initially painting genre subjects for the general market. Some foreign-born artists, such as Dirck van Baburen of the Utrecht Caravaggisti and Pieter van Laer of the Bamboccianti, were drawn to Caravaggio’s revolution; others, Poussin and Claude for example, turned to the classical. There were also established figures with patrons who nevertheless painted for a broader market: Michiel Sweerts and Guercino are examples.
A richly illustrated catalogue will be printed in conjunction with the exhibition. It will feature new scholarship in English by Patrizia Cavazzini and Caterina Volpi. Cavazzini, a leading expert of the seicento art market, will examine the mechanisms of the art trade in Rome in the first half of the 17th century. Hitherto unpublished information from her archival research will be made available for the first time. Volpi, author of the primary monograph on Salvator Rosa and curator of the recent Guercino/Ludovisi exhibition in Rome, will write about the so-called "Outsider" artists—such as Salvator Rosa, who worked outside the traditional system of aristocratic and church patronage, the Bamboccianti, and some of the Caravaggisti, who were what in the 19th century were called "Bohemian," and were part of this vibrant community of independent spirits.

Image: Master of the Open-Mouthed Boys, active 1620–40, Head of a Boy, ca. 1620–25, oil on canvas, 38.9 x 28.9 cm. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund.

Host or Publisher The Italian Academy of Columbia University