'Senza il minimo scrupolo': Artists as dealers in seventeenth-century Naples

Abstract

Seventeenth-century Neapolitan artists dealt in paintings as a matter of course. A few used their contacts with leading patrons and collectors to deal in prestigious old-master and contemporary paintings while for the majority dealing offered the scope to refine their businesses through strategies of specialization or diversification. Carlo Sellitto sold landscape and still-life paintings alongside his large, Caravaggesque gallery pictures and altarpieces and Andrea Vaccaro employed Bernardo Cavallino to paint half-length pictures and small cabinet paintings while he worked on his generally larger commissions. Even painters ranked much lower in the art world stocked their workshops with pict..