Abstract
Economists have claimed that the invisible hand of competition is behind the historical episodes of outstanding artistic achievement, from Shakespearean theater to musical composition in Mozart’s Vienna. Competition, the argument goes, acts on producers of the arts just as it does on producers of mundane commodities. By pitting one artist against all others for the public’s purse and the critics’ praise, rivalry encourages them to supply more refined products. While often left unstated, the same argument implies that the absence of competition will be detrimental to the quality of artists’ output. We extend that insight to explain the decline of the Florentine school of painting in the Late Renaissance period. The rise of the Medici family as Florence’s ruling dynasty turned the previously competitive market for paintings into a monopsony. That development, we argue, strengthened the benefits to local painters of forming a cartel to reclaim the rents captured by the monopsonist. The result was the creation of a local painters’ guild that restricted competition, ultimately contributing to a decline in the quality and influence of Florentine painting.
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Notes
Throughout the paper, we will follow the (admittedly pretentious) practice of art historians by sometimes referring to the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries as Trecento, Quattrocento, and Cinquecento respectively.
See, for instance, the works reviewed in De Marchi and Van Miegroet (2006).
We follow Galenson (2011) and Kelly and O’Hagan (2007) in relying on art history manuals as sources of quantitative evidence on the significance of an artist’s contributions. Janson and Janson (2001) is a popular college-level art history textbook, while Phaidon (1997) is a famous reference work focusing on 500 artists, including painters, from art’s history. In the appendix, we replicate the results from Figs. 1, 2, 3 and 4 with data from two other popular texts on the history of Western art: Gardner (1926) and Honour and Fleming (2010). Regardless of the source on which we rely, the picture remains the same: Florentine painters achieved prominence in the fourteenth century and maintained significant influence throughout the fifteenth, only to experience a drastic decline in the second half of the Cinquecento.
In his article, Vaubel (2005) focuses mainly on the demand side of the market. He also identifies a sixth channel, which applies explicitly to competition between jurisdictions. In a more fragmented polity, rulers are constrained in their ability to raise taxes, leaving the wealthy with more income available to patronize the arts.
As opposed to evidence that competition has beneficial effects in the same markets, which is indirect evidence of the negative consequences of its absence.
Price discrimination is feasible if (a) the buyer knows the elasticities of supply of the different sellers and (b) sellers cannot trade commission incomes amongst themselves. The latter condition undoubtedly was met in the Renaissance art market since commissions were painter-specific and could not be subcontracted to other, lower-cost painters. Regarding (a), the Medici would have been in good position to price-discriminate against local painters given that information relevant to their elasticities of supply—such as their skills and talent, reputation in other art markets, and incomes—would have been available readily to the rulers of Florence.
It is worth pointing out that all major masters during the Renaissance employed other painters, generally young trainees and less talented artisans, to perform a variety of tasks from the grinding of colors to the painting of minor figures. For an economic analysis of this division of labor in painters’ workshops, see Piano (2021).
The actual ability of the oligopoly to increase its share of the total surplus will depend on its bargaining power in dealing with the monopsonist.
See contract #15 in the appendix to Piano and Piano (2021).
According to Jack (1976, p. 12), the Accademia made “one exception” by allowing a group of six Venetian artists to join.
Having been emancipated from the jurisdiction of other guilds, the decisions of the painters’ courts could be reviewed and reversed only by the Mercanzia, Florence’s supreme court for commercial affairs.
A potential counterargument would be that the Accademia facilitated the transmission and adoption of new ideas and techniques by providing a place for artists to meet and share ideas. Yet, such an institution already existed in the Compagnia and painters had been copying each other and adapting their styler to incorporate innovative techniques and styles for centuries. By increasing the degree of homogeneity among Florentine painters, the Accademia reduced the number of innovations to be transmitted and adopted in the first place.
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Acknowledgements
We thank one anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions. We are especially grateful to editors Shughart and Leeson for their comments and guidance. We benefited from our conversations with Sheri Shaneyfelt.
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Piano, E.E., Hardy, T. Rent seeking and the decline of the Florentine school. Public Choice 192, 59–78 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-022-00971-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-022-00971-9