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Privately Commissioned Paintings in Florence and Venice during the Renaissance – A System of Patronage and Art Collecting Susanne Lopan (25143316) Private Art Patronage thesis Domestic Imagery Renaissance Art Sixteenth-Century Italy Art Collecting and Consumption Venice and Florence Art Markets and Second-Hand Trade The aim of this research is to investigate which types of images were present in private homes in Venice and Florence during the sixteenth century, the motivations behind their popularity, and how these choices reflected broader social and cultural trends. While patronage itself has often been studied, a comprehensive contextual analysis of private patronage has not been fully explored. This thesis represents a pioneering attempt to demonstrate how Venetian and Florentine interest in collecting paintings was not driven solely by decorative or aesthetic concerns. Instead, it was tied to local circumstances that gave rise to forms such as the restello and idealised portraiture in Venice, and luxury objects like the desco da parto, the tondo, and the sudario in Florence. Drawing extensively on primary sources from the State Archives in Venice, Padua, and Florence, this thesis demonstrates that private art served as a vehicle through which complex cultural and social concerns were negotiated. The relationship between artist and patron is examined alongside the dynamics of the open art market, second-hand trade, auctions, and the circulation of inexpensive prints sold by street vendors. A formal and stylistic analysis of images displayed in private homes reveals their multiple layers of meaning. Although Renaissance images displayed in museums today are often interpreted as either devotional or decorative, this thesis argues that their original significance was more ambiguous. By addressing the sphere of private patronage, the role of the second-hand market, and the tendency to view luxury items only through the lens of function, this study challenges longstanding distortions and misinterpretations of sixteenth-century domestic imagery. In doing so, it offers a new perspective and helps to fill significant gaps in the existing scholarship. 2026-10-01T08:31:43Z Text Thesis 10.25392/leicester.data.34031502.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Privately_Commissioned_Paintings_in_Florence_and_Venice_during_the_Renaissance_A_System_of_Patronage_and_Art_Collecting/34031502 All Rights Reserved