The Art Biz: Desire, Culture, Receipts

The "business of art" has an all-too-obvious meaning. When a work of art makes the news, for example, most often it has just achieved some extraordinary price at auction. When a private collection goes on the block and makes a record sum, auctioneers beam like stock traders greeting a new milestone in the Dow. Such headlines, and the dazzling figures involved, reinforce an equation -- not to say a confusion -- between art and money.

But the "business of art" also signifies something more subtle and important: Art has its business in the world, in how a society functions and sees itself. As works of circulate from creator to patron, from dealer to collector, from private interior to public gallery, the transactions can be as much about sheltering the emotional, cultural and intellectual value of art as they are about money, even as prices climb and currency changes hands.

This aspect of art and business lies below the gaudy spectacle of auction sales, but it can be traced and brought to life through letters, receipts, inventories, photographs and even swatches of the fabric used to provide a prized acquisition with exactly the right backdrop.

Consider a letter written to a collector in 1628 by the Italian painter Guido Reni, one of the leading artistic figures of the day. Unlike his lesser competitors, Reni told his prospective client, he would not mechanically fix a painting's price based on the number and size of the figures in the work. Instead, the matter of compensation would be left to the purchaser's discretion, thus making the transaction more a reciprocal exchange of gifts and gestures of esteem between peers. In the end, Reni did the better because of it.

Documents like this one offer crucial evidence concerning the changing status of painting from a craft to something like a cultured profession. They also highlight the increasing cultivation of artistic expertise by the wealthy and well born.

Over time, in place of the intimacy that existed between Reni and his patron, the successful pursuit of such expertise most often depended upon the mediation of a dealer, especially one like Joseph Duveen in the early decades of the 20th century. The papers of this larger-than-life character provide a portrait of Gilded Age manners worthy of Edith Wharton.