Audio tour Art Patronage: How Commissioned The Paintings?

Who paid for this painting? Who called the painter and negotiated with him? In this tour we will show you who sponsored a painting and how rich and important people used art to make them famous among their contemporaries and exhibit their wealth and power. Paintings were in those times the only media to communicate to the illiterate majority of the population, and appearing on them was similar to today’s commercial ads.
In this itinerary you will be able to admire art masterpieces and identify who chose the painter, discussed the subject, negotiated the price, agreed on their visual presence in the scene and eventually paid for it, being depicted in return as one of the characters: initially small and humble, then more and more important and visually invasive. They are called patrons, and sponsoring art is termed patronage.
In this visit, we will guide you in the backstage of art creation and to understand how religion, politics, ambition and richness made a masterpiece possible and brought to us the portraits of personalities of the past, sometimes unknown but often very famous.