Organizers: Saida Bondini, Courtauld Institute of Art and Marcello Calogero, Scuola Normale Superiore.

The interplay between artistic patronage and socio-political power has long been at the centre of scholarly writings. Scholarship has deeply investigated the visual strategies put in place by princes, kings, and ruling families, to reinforce their political preeminence and convey an image of absolute power. Thus, public sites of patronage were often employed to make manifest the presence of the ruler in the city.

Despite these hierarchical systems, various centres of power existed. In courtly and oligarchic contexts, many individuals or families not having a political position relied on considerable financial means and newly acquired social status. Often in these cases, the lack of institutional power was counterbalanced by a pursuit for social distinction, fostered, also, through artistic patronage. This was made possible by conspicuous wealth, sometimes even surpassing that of the ruling power.

Tensions arising from this socio-political condition affected not only courtly environments. Cities like Venice or Bologna promoted an ideal egalitarianism between the members of the oligarchic power, but this often led to social clashes that impacted the practice of commissioning art. In these cases proper strategies of parallel patronage emerged.

This panel aims to determine the extent to which these conflicts were visualised and displayed in the urban public spaces of Italian cities. Do typological, stylistic, and iconographical choices allow us to trace these kind of social tensions? To what extent were ‘parallel patrons’ perceived as a threat to centralised power? When and why were princely or dominant patterns imitated or deliberately challenged? And finally, how can we track those reactions? Are there any documentary or literary sources which give an idea of the extent to which these practices were publicly disapproved of or accepted?

Papers are welcome from postgraduate, early career and established researchers working in different fields (art history, history, literature, etc.). Proposals of no more than 300 words can be submitted together with a short CV to Saida Bondini (saida.bondini at courtauld.ac.uk) and Marcello Calogero (marcello.calogero at sns.it) by June 30.