Artists, Merchants, and the Trade in Pigments in Renaissance Florence

FAIN: FT-52676-04

Julia A. DeLancey
Truman State University (Kirksville, MO 63501-4200)

This project expands our understanding of Renaissance art and culture by providing new information for and analysis of the reception, interpretation, and reading of color in paintings. The Summer 2004 work studies the trade in pigments during the Renaissance by analyzing documents in the Archivio Datini in Prato (outside Florence). This exceptional archive provides ample documentation for trade, but scholars have not yet mined it for information on artists’ colors. These goods were central to the artists’ (and particularly painters’) craft; the project seeks to understand not only pigments as commodities, but also the ways in which their nature as commodities establishes a set of values that affects the reception of the paintings in which they play a prominent role.

Associated Products

Shipping Colour: Valute, Pigments, Trade and Francesco di Marco Datini (Article)
Title: Shipping Colour: Valute, Pigments, Trade and Francesco di Marco Datini
Author: Julia A. DeLancey
Abstract: In the last decade, scholars of the Renaissance have turned their attention towards the materials used by artists to create their beautiful and much-studied work, as well as the trade networks that valued and circulated these materials. This article draws on material from the archives of the well-known late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century merchant Francesco di Marco Datini from Prato, using in particular the little-studied ‘valute’ or valuation documents made by Datini agents or hired appraisers in numerous cities around western Europe and the Mediterranean. It uses these documents to explore a number of issues in relation to Datini’s involvement with trade of materials for artists including: how would Tuscan merchants such as Datini have viewed these goods? To which cities would he have turned for their supply? What might they tell us about overall networks during the period? An understanding of the way in which colouring materials came into Italy, were processed, and arrived on the artists’ palette lays the vital groundwork for our understanding of both painters’ attitudes to their materials as well as the reactions of their viewers and audiences.
Year: 2010
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Trade in Artists' Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700, eds. Jo Kirby, Susie Nash, and Joanna Cannon
Publisher: Archetype Publications (London)

Shipping Colour: Observations on the Import of Pigments around 1400 in Tuscany (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Shipping Colour: Observations on the Import of Pigments around 1400 in Tuscany
Author: Julia A. DeLancey
Abstract: In the last decade, scholars of the Renaissance have turned their attention towards the materials used by artists to create their beautiful and much-studied work, as well as the trade networks that valued and circulated these materials. This article draws on material from the archives of the well-known late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century merchant Francesco di Marco Datini from Prato, using in particular the little-studied ‘valute’ or valuation documents made by Datini agents or hired appraisers in numerous cities around western Europe and the Mediterranean. It uses these documents to explore a number of issues in relation to Datini’s involvement with trade of materials for artists including: how would Tuscan merchants such as Datini have viewed these goods? To which cities would he have turned for their supply? What might they tell us about overall networks during the period? An understanding of the way in which colouring materials came into Italy, were processed, and arrived on the artists’ palette lays the vital groundwork for our understanding of both painters’ attitudes to their materials as well as the reactions of their viewers and audiences.
Date: 2/11/2005
Conference Name: European Trade in Painters’ Materials to 1700 (held at The Courtauld Institute and the National Gallery, London)

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