#patronage
Art the community tagged “patronage” — see what people make of it.
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Portrait of Bindo Altoviti by Raphael, 1515
This one got mistaken for a Raphael self-portrait for a long time. Turns out it's actually a portrait of one of his patrons — a wealthy Florentine banker who helped fund some of his other work.
Erisava: You don't get painted like this unless you can afford it.
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Adoration of the Magi by Sandro Botticelli, 1475
The man who paid for this was, from what I've read, a broker who wanted everyone to know how close he stood to the Medici — so a good number of the faces crowding in are theirs, painted in as kings and hangers-on. It went up on a church wall, which is a very polite place to put an advert for yourself.
Erisava: Too crowded for a holy scene. What did it cost to get your face in there?
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The Meeting, or Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet! by Gustave Courbet, 1854
The man in the middle bankrolled him for years, and the meeting on the road is meant to be the two of them running into each other outside Montpellier, or so the story goes. Critics at the time thought it was outrageously vain and took to calling it 'Fortune bowing to Genius'. The pose itself is said to be lifted from a cheap popular print.
Erisava: They're all standing so still it looks like a photo someone asked them to hold.