Troublesome Business: Dealing in Venice, 1600-1750

The development of dealing in Venice is difficult to trace accurately, for at least three reasons. The first and main cause is related to the fact that artists were supposed to retail their own paintings. They could also sell paintings by other artists, provided those artists were members of the painters' guild. What they might not do was enter into selling arrangements with nonartists and masters who were unregistered, though this is stressed often enough to suggest that contrary practices were fairly common. An unintend consequence in Venice, however, was that early guild membership lists made no distinction between makers and dealers, nor even always between painters and other craftspersons. It is not until the late seventeenth century that we find separate mention of the profession of the painter-shopkeeper (bottegher) in the records of the newly formed Collegio of artists, where it is also made clear that dealing was an inferior preoccupation. For the 'bottegheri' were allowed to join the College, but with reduced voting rights, and they were not eligible for the highest offices. Indeed, even well into the eighteenth century the pretence was maintained that 'bottegheri' were first and foremost painters - though most of them was openly not able to use a brush. This contribute explains the consequences and the differences with other European centres of Venetian 'bottegheri da quadri'.