The art market

When Rembrandt determined to reach a life of luxury, renounced patronage and took the profitable orders of the Amseterdam market, the art market was born at that time.

The painters were emancipated from the patrons: neither a king or a pope. They achieved a much greater level of freedom to their themes and ideas and greater profits. Flanders seventeenth century, where there is artistic and commercial wealth.

Rembrandt was born in Leiden in 1606, when the city was recovering from a hard war against Spain and welcomed refugees from the Walloons and Flemings of the south, attracted by prosperity and commerce. Constantin Huygens, had the idea of ​​discovering painters for the new court as he had seen in Italy, Paris and London. Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam plagued by merchants and money.

The development of the themes was linked to the taste of collectors and gradually also to the interest of painters. The cadres stopped acting as objects of political or religious power and circulated as part of a patrimony and investment, they can be detached from them, which increases more the demand than the offer and there is a competitiveness among the clients that want the paint. The market is created and the figure of the art dealer appears, who soon begins to impose conditions on the artists, many of whom have enriched themselves.

As artists specialized, they were more likely to find their own lucrative market niche. Paulus Potter specialized in cows that rise above the horizon or rest next to the trees. Philips Wouerman painted horses of correct anatomy and Jan Weenix, focused on still-lifes framed in Italian architectures that precede Romanticism. Painters are creating, with commercial vision, an author's mark.

The trade in works of art had been limited to nearby territory, due to the complexity of transport and the low diplomatic activity. But in a context in which trade flows between nations and diplomacy is extended, the demand for gifts and presents destined to pave the roads of ambassadors and merchants grow, so the works travel further and with them the artist name. The merchants act as intermediaries, begin to require the figures of expert appraisers, catalog editors, lawyers ... and public events are born for sales, fairs and public art auctions such as Saint-Germain in France and Leipzig in Germany , or the Antwerp and Amsterdam auctions.

Over the years, artists led painting only by order and the workshops begin to produce massively and for first time for unknown or anonymous clients. The new wealth and recognition of painters is linked, in large part, to the market.

Rembrandt, who lived that transition in person and enjoyed the great prosperity that this market offered to artists, ended up emancipating also from this new reality of painting.