The reinvention of art-history during the 1980s has provided a serious challenge to the earlier formalist and connoisseurial approaches to the discipline, in ways which can only help economic and social historians in the current drive to study past societies in terms of what they consumed, produced, perceived and imagined. This group of essays focuses on three main issues: the demand for art, including the range of art objects purchased by various social groups; the conditions of artistic creativity and communication between different production centres and artistic millieux; and the emergence of art markets which served to link the first two phenomena. The work draws on new research by art historians and economic and social historians from Europe and the United States, and covers the period from the late Middle Ages to the early nineteenth century.

About the Author

Michael North is Professor and Head of the Dept of History at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt UniversitAt, Greifswald,Germany; David Ormrod is Senior Lecturer in Economic & Social History at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.

Reviews
'...this collection of conference papers - bringing together research by economic and cultural historians - is welcome because it adds substantially to our knowledge in specific areas and opens up new methods of interrogating the material.... the essays in this volume will enlarge the vision and sharpen the analysis of all scholars in this expanding field.' Renaissance Journal 'the volume as a whole is thought-provoking and elicits the desire for more - an appropriate response to its subject of luxury consumption. It makes available to the English-speaking audience European scholarship in several languages and will be of interest to graduate students and faculty in history, art history, and economics.' Linda Levy Peck, George Washington University 'The welcome shift in emphasis from production to social milieu, to historical analyses of markets, international art trade, consumption of cultural artifacts, and the attendant notions of value, rationales for pricing, and their place and role as luxury goods in various local contexts, clearly announce one of the new directions in combined research in the humanities and social sciences. There's more to come, no doubt, and this study is leading the way.' Sixteenth Century Journal '... thought-provoking and elicits the desire for more... It makes available to the English-speaking audience European scholarship in several languages and will be of interest to graduate students and faculty in history, art history, and economics.' The Historian



Book Information
ISBN 9781138380073
Author Michael North
Format Paperback
Page Count 264
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 453g