Beyond the Fringe at the Italian Academy
Beyond the Fringe:
Painting for the Market in 17th-Century Italy
Friday 25 April 2025
The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University
1161 Amsterdam Avenue, New York
A Study Day was held at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America to accompany the exhibition at Nicholas Hall, Beyond the Fringe: Painting for the Market in 17th-Century Italy (23 April – 24 May 2025).
The half day event comprises six presentations by curators and academics from leading European and American institutions, examining the complex network of actors in the thriving art market of Seicento Italy. At the turn of the 17th-century, Italy was a hub of artistic production, with artists flocking to the country from Northern Europe. The proliferation of artwork on the market no longer strictly beheld artists to an elite class of patrons; increasingly, they painted on spec and sold their work via a web of middlemen and dealers. While there has been extensive research on the production and sale of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art, the same is far from true for the Italian counterpart; in the English speaking world, this subject area is understudied. The Study Day and associated exhibition seek to draw attention to Italy’s flourishing primary and secondary art market in the seicento’s early decades. ❖
Session I
David Freedberg
Pierre Matisse Professor Emeritus of the History of Art; Director of The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America
Welcome
Nicholas Hall
Introduction
Caterina Volpi
Professor of Art History, Sapienza University, Rome
Painting the Truth
Responding to the demand for illustrating historical events and topographical landscape, painters active in Rome in the mid-seventeenth century developed a new concept of truth—one that, in part, stems from the choice between Caravaggio’s naturalism and Bellorian classicism. This presentation focuses on examples by the Bamboccianti, such as Jan Miel, Michelangelo Cerquozzi, and Neapolitans, notably Salvator Rosa, to investigate the links between history painting and anecdotes of everyday life.
Lara Yeager-Crasselt
Curator and Department Head of European Painting and Sculpture, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
Michael Sweerts and Netherlandish Artists in 17th-Century Rome: Between Market and Academy
This talk explores Flemish artist Michael Sweerts’s relationship to the Accademia di San Luca and the Netherlandish artistic community in Rome in the mid-17th century. Revisiting the long-held view that Dutch and Flemish artists had a contentious relationship with Rome’s Academy, this paper offers some new reflections on how artists negotiated these dynamics. Sweerts, who worked both for the market and for prominent patrons such as the papal Pamphilj, provides a fascinating case study of an artist whose position of trust across various groups helped him garner an advantageous position in the market.
Matthew Hargraves
Director, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford
What’s in a Name?
Arthur Everett “Chick” Austin’s (1900–1957) visionary collecting of early Baroque paintings for the Wadsworth Atheneum as Director between 1927 and 1944 had a particular focus on Roman works by followers of Caravaggio. This talk will trace the shifting attributions of these pictures since their acquisition in the 1930s and 1940s and consider how these changes reflect evolving scholarly perspectives. More importantly, Hargraves will argue that the significance of these paintings lies not in securely attaching names to them, but in what they reveal about the artistic practices and dynamics of the art market in early seventeenth-century Rome.
Session II
John Marciari
Director of Curatorial Affairs and Head of the Department of Drawings and Prints, Morgan Library & Museum, New York
Flowers, Fruits, and a New Art Market: Caravaggio’s Early Years in Rome
Early paintings by Caravaggio, such as the Boy with a Basket of Fruit in the Galleria Borghese, can be related to works that the artist would have known in his native Lombardy; yet these same early paintings by Caravaggio figure prominently in discussions of a new Roman art market in the early seicento, an open market with paintings produced for sale, rather than to satisfy commissions. Examining the circumstances of Caravaggio’s early career, this presentation will explore some questions concerning the rapidly developing art world of Rome in the first years of the seventeenth century.
Wayne E. Franits
Distinguished Professor of Art History, Syracuse University, Syracuse
The Italian Patronage of the Utrecht Caravaggisti
Little is known about the involvement of Dirck van Baburen and Hendrick Terbrugghen—two of the most prominent members of the Utrecht Caravaggisti—in the seicento Roman art market. This lecture explores their Italian patronage, whose taste shed light on networks of patrons and artists in the Eternal City.
Sheila Barker
Director of the Center for Women in Renaissance Archives at the Medici Archive Project; Adjunct Professor of Art History, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Artemisia Gentileschi’s Feminist ReadyMades: Demand, Desire, and Reputation
The case of Artemisia Gentileschi’s production of oil paintings on spec provides an opportunity, in this talk, for considering how the element of gender may have complicated the circumstances for a woman artist. Artemisia would not have been able allow strangers access to her studio with the same informality as her male colleagues, and she relied on male intermediaries for many tasks relating to her business affairs. Yet in some ways her gender offered market advantages that she sought to heighten whenever possible.