Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy [Hardcover]

Patronage, in its broadest sense, has been established as one of the dominant social processes of pre-industrial Europe. While it has been traditionally viewed simply as the context for extraordinary artistic creativity, patronage has more recently been examined by historians and art historians alike as a comprehensive system of patron-client structures which permeated society and social relations. Focusing specifically on the city of Florence, these essays explore the new understanding of Renaissance Italy as a 'patronage society,' considering its implications for the study of art patronage and patron-client structures wherever they occur.

A useful and well-conceived volume. The essays are effectively related to one another and present a coherent picture of the role of patronage in Renaissance Italy. They shed considerable light on the relation of patronage to several basic issues currently in the scholarship. --History: Reviews ofNew Books

Handsome and well edited...[A]bout half (of the essays) deal with political patronage, usually also political in some of its aspects. Much is made of the convenient distinction in Italian between Mecenatismo (fostering of art and intellect) and clientelismo (a social system of powerful men protecting a retinue of followers)...Without losing the historian's primary interest in telling stories and describing situations, the participants have allowed refreshing winds to blow in from the fields of anthropology and sociology. They have opened up some questions of interest about practical authority in the early modern period. --Journal of the Behavioral Sciences