The Value of Art

  As several posts have mentioned, during our stay in Venice, we got to visit the “Doge's” (Duke's) palace, situated facing the city center of San Marco square. This grandiose building is a holy grail for art lovers. Figures of victory in battle, families of nobles, and Biblical depictions adorn every wall (and ceiling) space.

   Walking through the Palace, it is intuitive that the paintings have great value. They are beautiful to behold, and represent time gone by. What we may not consider is that like any other production, a painting is an economic good, and part of a market. By the Baroque era, artists, like any other tradesmen, were organized into guilds. This operated much like Unions for the individual sellers, and tended to form for each province. Today we have records of the contracts that artists signed with their buyers.

    There were many factors that determined how much income a particular work would bring. One study revealed that price was positively correlated with size, age of the artist, and whether it was destined for a large province. More interestingly, each additional figure in a painting on average made the painting worth 6-13% more. If it depicted Christ, it could be priced 24% higher than paintings that did not!

   While the Doge's art collection is undeniably a treasure, I was far more impacted by what lay below. Beneath the palace was the prison. It is stone and metal bars, with very little light. The draft blowing in made it even colder than outdoors, and I couldn't help but think of the people who were forced to brave winter after winter in that place.

The prison has its own gallery-- pictures that the prisoners etched in the stone to pass the time. They feature simple faces—mostly women – and scenes of the city outside. They are simple and the artists unskilled; simply the thoughts of people missing home.

Economic theory cannot always rightly judge what something is worth.

 The ceiling of the Great Council Room

  

Drawing of a person from the prison (hard to see, but it is on the right)

Photos by Faith Callies