The Gift and Art in Early Modernity

Abstract

This chapter examines the centrality of gift giving to the developing commercial cultures of early modern Europe and the rise to prominence of works of art, especially paintings, in circuits of gift exchange. Contrary to common assumption, gift giving in the early modern period acquired renewed importance as a mode of negotiating professional, social, and personal ties in a rapidly changing, increasingly commercialized environment. Art also emerged as an essential gift currency for negotiating relationships of patronage and clientage, and highly selfconscious artists increasingly turned to the gift’s symbolic economy to negotiate with patrons and set their transactions apart from ordinary forms of exchange. I probe the interconnections between gifts and art in various overlapping contexts of early modernity.