How did Baroque art influence commercialism?

by saucelobster

Thanks in advance!

musettemirabilis

I'm interpreting this to mean in essence 'how did the art market evolve during the Baroque/Golden Era' because I'm not quite sure what 'influence commercialism' means. Let me know if I'm off on a wild goose chase here.

The Dutch art market was one of the best case studies; following the Eighty Years' War, population redistributions due to widespread religious persecution and the growth of Dutch ports and other industry led to an influx of wealth in the Dutch Republic, allowing patrons to commission and support more artists. As a result, the demand for art among the laity grew, and at one point as many as two thirds of all homes in towns like Delft contained some form of art. The strength of the Dutch economy meant that not only the upper-classes - the aristocracy, business magnates like ship owners enz. - but also middle-class workers like soldiers, small business owners, and politicians were in a financial position to purchase art. Additionally, following the Council of Trent (1545-63), the purchasing power moved away from the church, leading the general populace to fill the economic vacuum that it left.

The commercialization of art in the Golden Era allowed artists like Rubens to make use of an atelier system (whose graduates, so to speak, included such artists as Van Dijck) to create more art in less time, and they were often asked only to personally be involved in creating only sketches or other minor components of a finished work. On the whole, paintings were made for an anonymous public, more or less consigned by an artist to a dealer, who would then sell the painting to its final buyer; sometimes artists would even make what's referred to as a 'wet paint sale', where they would actually sell their own paintings at market.

The specificity of tastes among buyers led to a high degree of specialisation among artists; still-lives and landscapes, which were less expensive as they could be created in less detailed and time-consuming styles, became quite popular, along with portraits and, to an extent, elaborate history and military paintings. The prevalence of more conservative Protestant philosophy in the Netherlands at the time meant that most art was smaller in format - framed paintings, rather than elaborate decoration and frescoes, which made it much easier for the general population to obtain and re-sell.

Edited slightly for phrasing