Risks in Renaissance Art

This Element represents the first systematic study of the risks borne by those who produced commissioned and purchased art across Renaissance Europe. It employs a new methodology built around concepts from risk analysis and decision theory. The Element classifies scores of documented examples of losses into ''production risks'' which arise from the conception of a work of art until its final placement and ''reception risks'' when a patron a buyer or viewer finds a work displeasing inappropriate or offensive. Significant risks must be tamed before players undertake transactions. The Element discusses risk-taming mechanisms operating society-wide: extensive communication flows social capital and trust and the measures individual participants took to reduce the likelihood and consequences of losses. Those mechanisms were employed in both the patronage-based system and the modern open markets which predominated respectively in Southern and Northern Europe.