The Arts of Collecting
Padre Sebastiano Resta and the Market for Drawings in Early Modern Europe

This work, first published in 2000, focuses on Sebastiano Resta to illuminates a crucial chapter in the history of collecting.

Genevieve Warwick (Author)

9780521181075, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 8 November 2012

306 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

'There is no doubt that this is a very significant addition indeed to the literature on the history of collecting …' Renaisssance Studies

First published in 2000, this is an examination of the collection of art works through an anthropological study of modes of exchange and the social roles of material culture. Focusing on the figure of Sebastiano Resta, Genevieve Warwick brings to light a shadowy, yet crucial chapter in the history of collecting, that of the great migration of art objects out of Italy to northern Europe in the early eighteenth century. Her study pins the history of collecting to broader changes in European economic history and analyzes the epistemological frameworks for viewing that accompanied this transfer of artistic wealth. Warwick also demonstrates how early modern art collecting was shaped by the social mores of elite 'arts of love'.

Introduction: towards a historical anthropology of collecting
Padre Sabastiano Resta and the collection of drawing in Early Modern Europe
1. Markets for drawings
2. Chivalrous gifts
3. Connoisseurial culture
4. Mnemonic collecting
Epilogue: the drawing and the amateur.

Subject Areas: History of art & design styles: c 1600 to c 1800 [ACQ]