This volume due for publication in early 2010 is based on the papers for the international conference 'European Trade in Painters' Materials to 1700', held at the Courtauld Institute and the National Gallery, London, with 8 additional contributions.
It addresses questions that sound simple but are notoriously difficult to answer: Where did artists buy their materials? Who prepared them? What did they cost? Where did they come from, and how? The resulting evidence concerning supply and distribution, availability, cost, quality and value of artists' materials is fundamental for interpreting surviving objects in a wider sense. The volume uses an interdisciplinary approach to address these questions, incorporating contributions by art historians, conservators, scientists, economic historians and historians of trade, from throughout Europe and the US. The authors draw on documentary material as diverse as pharmacy price lists, shipping and customs records, handbooks for merchants, traders' inventories and court account books. These sources are combined with technical evidence from the objects themselves so as to explore the movements of pigments, dyes, panels, canvases, alabaster, parchment and paper from their point of origin to their purchase by the consumer in the major European centres of trade. The contributions range from specific case histories to more general views of the mechanisms and actuality of trading. Questions of terminology that have dogged the study of this topic are addressed and clarified, and new evidence concerning the nature of the materials traded and their identification is presented. Much of the detailed material discussed is provided in table form, and the book, which is generously illustrated, includes many maps illustrating trade routes. There is no existing volume that draws together the international research in this new and rapidly-developing field of interdisciplinary enquiry.
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