The Patronage Game: Players and Rules in Early Modern Europe
--> --> Raphael, Portrait of Pope Julius II, 1511-12 BY ALEXANDRA A. JOPP The relationship between an artist and a patron during the Renaissance was a subtle one. Money can buy a lot of material objects, and in Renaissance Italy, it could buy even more important things, including status, respect and “the long lasting of [a patron’s] name and reputation, for which man’s desire is infinite.” (Nelson, Zeckhauser, 42.) All of these could be acquired by becoming a patron of the arts and commissioning a work that proclaimed one’s devotion to God, city, even oneself. Jonathan Nelson and Richard Zeckhauser in The Patron’s Payoff cite the example of the Florentine merchant and patron Giovanni Rucellai who “spent a great deal of money on his house, the façade of the church of Santa Maria Novella, the chapel and tomb in the church of San Pancrazio, and other projects.” These commissions, Rucellai said, brought him “the greatest contentment and the greatest plea...