Risks in Renaissance Art
Risks in Renaissance Art
Richard J. Zeckhauser, Harvard University, Massachusetts
This Element represents the first systematic study of the risks borne by those who produced, commissioned, and purchased art, across Renaissance Europe. It employs a new methodology, built around concepts from risk analysis and decision theory. The Element classifies scores of documented examples of losses into 'production risks', which arise from the conception of a work of art until its final placement, and 'reception risks', when a patron, a buyer, or viewer finds a work displeasing, inappropriate, or offensive. Significant risks must be tamed before players undertake transactions. The Element discusses risk-taming mechanisms operating society-wide: extensive communication flows, social capital, and trust, and the measures individual participants took to reduce the likelihood and consequences of losses. Those mechanisms were employed in both the patronage-based system and the modern open markets, which predominated respectively in Southern and Northern Europe.
Product details
March 2024Adobe eBook Reader
9781009402521
0 pages
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
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Table of Contents
- 1. Understanding risks in the renaissance
- 2. Production risks: sources and their control
- 3. Reception risks: inappropriate iconography and substandard skill
- 4. Risky business: northern images after the reformation, by Larry Silver
- 5. Three tales of trust and risk reduction
- References.
