The decline – and return? – of patronage
“For centuries,” wrote Benjamin Sutton at the art market website Artsy, “the Catholic Church was one of the world’s most important collectors and patrons of art.” But during the Renaissance secular powers grew apart from the Church, which lost its rights of taxation.
The Counter-Reformation saw a resurgence of Catholic art, especially Baroque – but that was the last era in which the Church “was able to throw significant weight (and money) around in the art world”, Sutton wrote. For, as Eleanor Oliphant of New York University remarks, “The rise of capitalism further removed capital from the hands of the Church, as more and more of it circulated through the market rather than being held within institutions.” But in recent years a small return to artistic patronage has begun in some places.
