Artists and their economic context. A comparison of payments to painters Caravaggio and Luca Giordano at the Pio Monte della Misericordia in seventeenth-century Naples

ABSTRACT

Catholic confraternities in early modern Europe adopted detailed accounting practices which reveal their social context. This study applies an accounting [in] history approach to the creative industries. We argue that confraternities' accounting books can help better appreciate prices paid to famous masters by contrasting them with payments to lesser-known artists and skilled craftsmen. After analysing 1118 payments related to a construction project at the Pio Monte della Misericordia (1659–1679), a Catholic confraternity in Naples, we focus on the contemporary acquisition of an altarpiece by the painter Luca Giordano. The analysis shows that its purchase accounted for a minor share of the expenses for the construction project, and that the main contribution of the Pio Monte to the creative industries was the cumulative payments to skilled craftsmen. Nonetheless, the value of Giordano's painting was significantly higher than unitary payments to minor artists. We then make a comparison with the price paid by the Pio Monte in 1606–1607 to Caravaggio for a similar painting, showing that payments to Giordano and Caravaggio were in line with both artists' market rates and those of similar painters in Naples and Rome. The study thus discusses how accounting sources situate artists within the creative industries of the past.

KEYWORDS:

• Accounting history
• arts market
• construction wages
• charitable institutions
• early modern Italy
• economic history

Introduction

This study explores how accounting books of Catholic confraternities in early modern Europe can be used to contextualise the prices of famous artworks within the creative industries and particularly the figurative arts, using a case study from seventeenth-century Naples. We address two main research questions: How economically significant was the acquisition of major paintings within the context of a large construction and artistic effort? How did payments to master painters compare to those paid to lesser-known artists, skilled craftsmen, and other creative professionals?

Our research is motivated by two different points of view. From the point of view of accounting history, growing attention has been paid in recent years to the use of accounting sources to study economic relations outside the organisations that produced the records. This accounting [in] history approach aims to use accounting as a lens to study ‘multi-faceted social and institutional contexts’ (McWatters 2014, 2; 2017, 2020) which can speak to a transdisciplinary audience. This approach is especially applicable to the study of Catholic confraternities – charitable institutions, also known as brotherhoods, that performed many secular functions in early modern Europe. Due to their frequent economic transactions and often large income, these institutions developed complex accounting and accountability practices, which offer useful insights on the contemporary economy (Baños and López-Manjón 2021, 60–63). In particular, confraternities were major sponsors of artistic production, at all levels of quality. They commissioned great masters for large altarpieces and signature sculptures but also lesser-known artists for smaller artworks, and they employed a large number of skilled craftsmen to decorate and maintain chapels, entire churches, and palaces (Ciambotti, Palazzi, and Sgrò 2018, 7–11). Studying the art industry from the perspective of the confraternities’ books can thus exemplify their potential for using accounting history to understand the outside world – an approach that can also be extended to other sectors of the economy.

From the point of view of economic history, studying the accounting records of the Catholic confraternities can provide a broader and more interconnected picture of the creative industry than traditional sources (such as artists’ contracts) allow. The emerging subfields of the Economic History of the Arts and the Economics of Art History collect large data sets on economic transactions in order to move beyond studies of single artists or their social groups to understand the functioning of the creative industries within the contemporary economy (Borowiecki 2023; Etro and Galenson 2023). For these purposes, the accounting records of religious brotherhoods can represent major and largely untapped primary sources, for they convey information not only on famous painters, sculptors, and architects, but also on lesser-known artists and skilled craftsmen (gilders, stone carvers, blacksmiths) who composed the majority of the creative industries in the past (Cavazzini 2008). This research aims to provide an example of such an approach by combining information from the accounting books of a religious confraternity with external data on payments to famous artists.

The choice of the setting for this study follows the research motivation. The involvement of religious brotherhoods in artistic production surged in seventeenth-century Italy under the influence of the Counter-Reformation, which promoted the use of realistic sacred images for conveying religious themes to laypeople (Gash 2015, 376–379). At the same time, the development of a lush Baroque aesthetic meant that churches and chapels were adorned with a larger quantity of artworks (paintings, sculptures, icons) and a denser texture of decorations (stucco, precious metals, stone carvings, tapestries) than before (Mulchay 2011, 134–135). Around the same time, confraternities were put under greater scrutiny by religious authorities in order to avoid the misuse of their resources, which strengthened the accountability systems and the adoption of adequate accounting strategies. These systems led to the production of a large quantity of records about their incomes and expenses (López-Manjón, Baños Sánchez-Matamoros, and Álvarez-Dardet 2012, 9–10).

Within Italian centres, the city of Naples is particularly appropriate for our research questions. First, there was a large concentration of religious brotherhoods, and their number increased significantly after the Counter-Reformation (Avallone and Salvemini 2022). These institutions maintained their own chapels and churches, and they kept detailed accounting books which have often been preserved to this day. Second, in Naples the art industry had peculiar and distinct connotations with respect to other major Italian centres. Whilst in cities such as Florence and Rome, artists had been given economic and cultural recognition at least since the Renaissance, in Naples they traditionally had a lower social status, akin to that of a skilled artisan.¹ Marshall (2016, 9–21) argues that the painters’ social status started improving in the early seventeenth century, partly thanks to the influence of ‘foreign’ masters such as Caravaggio who moved to the city and stimulated the development of private patronage. Nonetheless, the line between artists and artisans remained more blurred in Naples than elsewhere (Marshall 2017, 66–70), which reassures us about the validity of comparing payments to different professional categories.

Given these motivations, we focus on the case of the Pio Monte della Misericordia (henceforth Pio Monte), a major religious brotherhood in Naples that commissioned two famous paintings during the seventeenth century: the Seven Works of Mercy by the great master Caravaggio (painted between 1606 and 1607) and the Deposition of Christ by the famous Neapolitan painter Luca Giordano (1671). The latter commission coincided with the construction of the second church and palace of the Pio Monte, a major endeavour which lasted 20 years (circa 1658-1679) and required the contribution of several painters, sculptors, and skilled craftsmen. The Pio Monte kept detailed accounts of all payments to those involved in the construction project and recorded them in separate books from its ordinary accounts.²

For the first part of our analysis, we analyse all 1118 payments for the construction project. We have categorised the records according to the craft or profession of the recipient, which can be inferred from the payments’ references. The analysis shows that the acquisition of the paintings from renowned artists represented a minor share of the total expenses sustained by the Pio Monte for the construction and decoration project, but their unitary value was significant. The Deposition of Christ by Luca Giordano cost about 4 per cent of the annual expenses for the construction project, while the work of all sculptors and stone carvers would on average account for 35 per cent. However, for this single canvas Luca Giordano received more than the payments recorded in favour of architect Antonio Picchiatti in exchange for the original drawings of the church. This difference is partly explained by the notoriety of Luca Giordano since his fetched price was between three and five times higher than the sums paid by the Pio Monte to painters Andrea Malinconico and Giacomo di Castro for comparable artworks around the same time. However, a comparison with the prices of paintings sold in Naples and Rome during the same period shows that this sum was not exceptional, but rather in line with the artist’s own going rate and the prices fetched by painters of similar standing for commensurate work.

Having established the context of the acquisition of Giordano’s painting within the construction of the new church, we turn to comparing it with the sum that had been paid to Caravaggio for his Seven Works of Mercy over 60 years earlier. Comparing prices over time, the analysis confirms that the price asked by Caravaggio was extraordinary for the Neapolitan market at the beginning of the century, while that of Giordano is more similar to contemporaries of equal standing. However, the price asked by Caravaggio is found to be in line with the sums that he had obtained on the market in Rome around the same time. Taken together, these results indicate that notorious painters could fetch comparatively high prices with respect to lesser-known artists and skilled craftsmen, but the acquisition of their works represented a minor share of the payments that had to be sustained by their clients for a major construction and decoration project.

Even though these results do not substantially modify the consensus on the historical value of Caravaggio’s and Giordano’s work, they allow us to place them within their contemporary economic context. To the Pio Monte, the two artworks represented critical identifiers of the confraternity’s mission and status, but only in connection to the churches that were built to display them. For this purpose, a much wider range of minor artists and artisans were employed, which represented the largest economic contribution of the Pio Monte to the contemporary art industry. Thus, our results indicate how a comprehensive economic history of the arts should also include lesser-known creative figures, and how the accounting records of religious brotherhoods can provide the necessary sources.

The remainder of this study unfolds as follows. The next section further delineates the literature to which our research contributes, with special reference to the literature on religious confraternities, payments to artists, and the accounting [in] history approach. The following section briefly reviews the history of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, from its establishment through the building of the new church and palace, with special focus on the acquisition of the two paintings. We then present the methodology, which entails the use of accounting sources recording the payments by the Pio Monte for the construction of the second church and palace, and secondary sources giving information on the price of paintings sold in Rome in the seventeenth century. The analysis of the accounting sources and contextualisation of the acquisition of Giordano’s altarpiece are followed by a comparison between the latter and the acquisition of Caravaggio’s painting, over 60 years earlier. The final sections discuss the results and provide concluding comments.

Literature review

Religious confraternities in accounting history

Over the years, the study of accounting and accountability practices of religious institutions has received growing attention thanks to their prevalence in the history of modern Europe and the broad range of roles they played in society, which could go far beyond the accomplishment of holy duties (Carmona and Ezzamel 2006; Bigoni, Deidda Gagliardo, and Funnell 2013; Cordery 2015). A notable example is represented by the Catholic brotherhoods (also known as confraternities), organisations of lay people that were inspired by the religious doctrine to carry out charitable activities in favour of the general population. Commonly, these services meant to accomplish the corporal ‘works of mercy’, such as feeding the hungry or burying the dead, were offered to the poor or to specific social groups in need.³ The provision of such services required the management of large sums of money, which were usually collected from fees, alms, and bequests, and from the returns on investment into real estate and financial assets (Servalli 2013).

This ‘profane’ dimension of the brotherhoods called for a system of accountability, which became a formal requirement after the Council of Trent placed them under the supervision of religious authorities. The Counter-Reformation drive for greater vertical transparency and co-ordination across the Church (Quattrone 2004) required the adoption of statutes governing the structure and organisation of the confraternities, and it promoted the keeping of detailed records of all incomes and expenses. Since the confraternities were commonly made of lay individuals of considerable means (such as nobles, merchants, or guild members), records were usually kept according to the accounting standards of the time, thus providing us with a rich picture of their socio-economic context (Bianchi 2009; Moggi et al. 2016). Consequently, accounting historians have looked at the statutes and accounting books of the charities in order to study the evolution of accounting practices and notions of accountability in nonprofit organisations, and to contrast them with those of private individuals and commercial entities (Baños and López-Manjón 2021).

However, research opportunities can be found not only by looking inwards but also outwards, levering the informative content of the charities’ records to better understand contemporary society. Among possible avenues of research, Ciambotti, Palazzi, and Sgrò (2018) highlight the role of confraternities for the development of figurative arts in early modern Italy. In fact, besides providing funds for charitable services, brotherhoods expressed their worship by financing the construction of religious buildings and chapels, which required constant maintenance, improvement, and decoration. Sacred images, in particular, served as identifiers of the confraternities and displayed their social status before the public (D’Ovidio 2022). Ciambotti, Palazzi, and Sgrò (2018) notice that, in Italy, a significant share of the artistic heritage can be attributed to the patronage of religious brotherhoods, and thus their accounting books keep detailed and often untapped records of payments to artists of greater or lesser notoriety. For instance, by studying the case of a major confraternity in Urbino, Ciambotti, Palazzi, and Sgrò (2018) show the key role played by this institution in sponsoring the work of major Renaissance painters in the city.

In this study, we expand on this approach by investigating a major confraternity in early modern Naples, the Pio Monte della Misericordia, which acquired artworks from some of the most important painters who were active in the city at the time of its artistic boom. With respect to previous research, however, we do not focus solely on payments to masters, but instead we extend the analysis to minor artists, sculptors, skilled artisans, and other professions. This broader angle is made possible by the special accounts that the Pio Monte kept recording all payments connected to the construction of a church and palace during the seventeenth century. Our analysis aims to show that the accounting books of confraternities can be used to reconstruct a detailed picture of contemporary arts and crafts industries, their respective role within a large construction and decoration project, and the relative standing of the different individuals involved. This approach allows us to situate the master painters within their economic milieu and add deeper meaning to the records of payments in their favour.

As we lever the peculiarities of the Catholic brotherhoods’ accounting practices after the Counter-Reformation to shed new light on the economic relationship outside the Pio Monte, we follow the accounting [in] history approach, with a focus on the economic history of the arts.

Accounting [in] history and the arts

Trends in historiography have extended over time the range of approaches within accounting history, expanding from traditional studies concerning the technical evolution of accounting practices, to the ‘new’ accounting history revival which focused on their wider societal implications, until more recent use of accounting sources as a lens for exploring disparate topics in economic and social history. This latter approach, which is often known as accounting [in] history, is considered of much transdisciplinary interest for it can speak to debates outside of traditional accounting history and, at the same time, often borrows theories and methods from cognate disciplines (McWatters 2014, 2017; Patmore and Westcott 2020; see also Lepore 2005; Hernández Esteve 2010, 164–165).

These different historiographical perspectives have also been applied to studies that intersect accounting history and the creative arts. In a review of the specialist literature, McKinstry (2020) distinguishes between various streams of research that have explored this interaction. A common one looks at how artists depicted accountants and their practices, shedding light on ‘how accounting has been perceived from outside itself, for instance as a social phenomenon.’ A traditional example of this approach for the European case is represented by Basil S. Yamey’s work, which traced early artistic representations of accountants and their tools to the fourteenth century, when a renovated artistic taste for realism and the growing demand by a new commercial class led to the appearance of accounting-related themes in paintings (Yamey 1986, 78–80). Therefore, by studying the representation of accounting practices in the iconography, historians can evaluate the social and cultural assimilation of bookkeeping practices within the evolution of the European society. Research has shown that this assimilation extended beyond technical applications and contributed to shaping the concept of accountability in economic relations (Achilli, Busco, and Giovannoni 2022, 512).

The study of accounting in relation to the creative arts, however, is not limited to the iconography of bookkeeping. In the same overview, McKinstry (2020, 630) describes other streams of research, including how accounting records can elucidate the economic motivation of the artists through the ‘pricing of work and the drawing of salaries or capital’. It is in fact a traditional methodology in art history to study artists’ lives through the lens of accounting sources: the commercialisation of the artistic market and the professionalisation of painters and sculptors made more frequent and systematic the practice of recording artistic commissions and especially, their monetary value. According to this historiographical approach, accounting represents a primary source to reconstruct the biographic events of single artists and their clientele (Slotsgaard 2019; McKinstry 2020, 630).

A less common approach, instead, consists in using accounting sources not to study the work of single artists, but rather to situate their production within the wider economic and social context and that of their clientele (Haskell 1963; Guerzoni 1999; Spear and Sohm 2010; Christensen and Jager 2019). Sometimes, such studies go beyond accounting sources, combining them with less traditional documents. An example is offered by Cavazzini (2008), who uses information from court records to reconstruct the formation of a large art market in seventeenth-century Rome, outside of traditional patronage circles which were limited to a selection of high-profile artists. Cavazzini notes that ‘court testimonies are more informative than many of the sources traditionally used in art history, such as records of payments, contracts and inventories’ (Cavazzini 2008, 10) because they shed light on minor artistic production that would otherwise go unnoticed. This historiographical approach allows us not only to achieve a more complete characterisation of artistic production in a specific historical context, but also to assess the artists’ socioeconomic status with respect to other craftsmen such as gilders, decorators, and book illuminators (Cavazzini 2008, 13–23).

The motivation to use accounting sources not to study single artists, but rather to describe their broader interactions has also found application within economic history. For instance, by combining the quantitative analysis of accounting sources with economic theory, it is possible to evaluate the structural aspects of the artistic market: the production costs of works of art, the organisation of workshops, the presence of economies of scale, the conditions of demand and supply, as well as the qualitative differences between artists, according to how the clients perceived them (Nelson and Zeckhauser 2014; Etro and Pagani 2012; Simon 2019). These recent approaches, which fall under the emerging fields of the Economic History of the Arts, or the Economics of Art History, help us to understand the economic role of the arts in early modern Europe, when a significant share of minor artistic production happened outside patronage and major artistic commissions.

This study follows in a similar vein, as we aim to show how the use of accounting records, combined with secondary sources, can contribute to contextualising the acquisition of (minor or major) works of arts. We tackle this problem by presenting the acquisition of major paintings by the Pio Monte della Misericordia, a charity institution in seventeenth-century Naples, during the construction of its new church and palace. The analysis of the accounting books recording the payments to the architect, craftsmen and other artists involved in the construction project enables us to contextualise the price paid to Luca Giordano. In addition, an indirect comparison will be performed with respect to the price paid by the Pio Monte to another renowned Italian master, Caravaggio, over 60 years earlier. This comparison is carried out indirectly using secondary sources, including a dataset of prices of paintings sold in Rome in the seventeenth century. Before providing further details on the methodology and sources used, we give a short historical overview of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, with special reference to the construction of the new church and the acquisition of these two major works of art during the seventeenth century.

Historical background

The origins of the Pio Monte della Misericordia and Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy

The Pio Monte delle Sette Opere di Misericordia was a charitable institution established in Naples on 19 April 1602, by seven young aristocrats in order to provide charitable assistance to people in need (Sersale 1865; Casanova 2008). Such an initiative was by no means novel in Italy, for similar charities had been established since the late Middle Ages, most often in the form of secular brotherhoods (Albini 2017). In Naples particularly, the number of confraternities loosely defined increased sharply towards the end of the sixteenth century (Avallone and Salvemini 2022), just around the time of the Pio Monte’s creation. However, the Pio Monte quickly gained a notable status and soon attracted considerable contributions from the Neapolitan aristocracy (Gazzara 2011).

The Pio Monte was characterised by the will of its founders to carry out all of the seven works of mercy, that is feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, burying the dead, visiting the imprisoned, and lodging the pilgrims (Ape 1705; Sodano 1994; Pisani Massamormile 2003). ‘Visiting the sick’ was carried out by providing food and shelter at the Ospedale degli Incurabili (a local hospital) and by caring for a spa house, purposely built in Ischia. Other essential activities included the coverage of funeral costs and the financing of intercessions for the dead. Through co-operation with the Jesuit order, the Monte also provided food and clothing to convicts. Further initiatives were focused on paying the ransoms for the slaves kidnapped by the Barbary corsairs, supporting the ‘Byzantine Greeks’ and other pilgrims, and to provide help to wealthy people fallen into misery.

The Pio Monte financed these activities through the proceeds of its financial assets, which were accumulated via ‘subscription fees’ paid by the secular members of the institution, the receipt of bequests, other income originating from the lease of lands and buildings, and interests from bond shares and from loans to private citizens (Sodano 1994, 444–453; De Rosa 2003, 231–243; Del Pesco 2008). The first gatherings of the Governors of the Pio Monte were held in a room at the Ospedale degli Incurabili. As the activities expanded, the need for establishing dedicated premises soon arose (Leonetti Rodinò 2012). Therefore, during the final months of 1604, some buildings were bought in order to build a small chapel and a place to host the meetings. Archival material concerning the building of the first premises is partially missing, but research carried out by Gazzara has dated the first significant expenditures for the construction works and payments to the architect to the period from September 1606 to February 1607 (Gazzara 2019, 62).⁴

It was around this time that the Pio Monte also acquired an oil altarpiece, the Seven Works of Mercy, by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The renowned artist had arrived in Naples between the end of September and the first days of October 1606, when he was escaping the death penalty for the killing of Ranuccio Tommasoni in Rome. His reputation and the influence of his protectors allowed Caravaggio to find work since the very first weeks of his stay in the city. His first client was reportedly Nicolò Radolovich, a member of a rich family of merchants from Bari. During the spring of 1607, Caravaggio received a series of payments for at least 440 ducats from the de Franchis family (Pacelli 1977, 820). According to Pacelli, it is plausible that such payments referred to the Flagellation of Christ, a painting 2.86 metres high and 2.13 metres wide, which was completed by Caravaggio between 1607 and 1608 and was originally set in the family chapel within the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore. Around the same time, Caravaggio realised the Seven Works of Mercy for the Pio Monte, which the institution paid a similar sum (400 ducats) and located in the newly constructed church (Pacelli 1984; Spinosa 2004; Bologna 2006; Bühren 2017). The canvas has remained the most valuable piece in the Pio Monte’s heritage collection (Causa 1970; Capobianco 1997).

The construction of the new church and Giordano’s Deposition of Christ

Both the original palace and church soon appeared too small for the ambitions of the Pio Monte della Misericordia (Leonetti Rodinò 1991). The first half of the century was a period of rapid development for the Pio Monte, with the number of members doubling by 1640. Such a significant success made it inconvenient to carry out the religious ceremonies in the original church. Furthermore, the premises themselves were inadequate to host the activities of the Pio Monte given that the space was inadequate to maintain an appropriate archive for the quantity of documents that had accumulated since its foundation (Gazzara 2019, 63–64).

Therefore, in 1651, a resolution for building a new palace and church was approved. Over the next years, the Pio Monte gradually purchased the buildings adjacent to the original premises. According to Alessandro Corona, an eighteenth-century employee of the institution who wrote a chronicle of the first century of its activity, these acquisitions had already begun by 1651 and continued through 1660 (Corona 1743). However, the start of the construction works was delayed due to uncertainty about the resources that could be allocated to the new construction works. No later than January 1656, it was decided to use for the construction project la ricadenza da gli albarani de Cattivi, the unused sums set aside to pay for captives’ ransoms, which was the most infrequent expenditure amongst those of the Pio Monte (D’Amora 2008) as well as the ‘annuities and the net sums coming from other legacies and bequests already given or to be given to the Monte.’⁵ However, changing the destination of the receipts from their original expenditure items faced resistance from some members. To resolve the dispute, the Governors of the Pio Monte consulted three theologians, Jesuits and Dominicans, who justified the reallocation of the funds.

Therefore, the Governors could proceed with the construction of the new buildings, appointing Michele Blanch, the Marquis of San Giovanni, as the construction Deputy, and setting the starting date to April 1658. The project was entrusted to the architect Francesco Antonio Picchiatti. However, the construction works started only towards the end of 1659, when the buildings bought during the previous years had been finally demolished (Gazzara 2019, 65). The main works lasted over 15 years, ending in 1672. It was towards the end of this period that the Pio Monte commissioned Luca Giordano with the second masterpiece in its collection, the Deposition of Christ, which would eventually be located in the new church. The simultaneity between the painting’s acquisition and the other expenses for the construction and decoration of the church allow us to perform a comparative analysis using the accounting books of the Pio Monte. The next section describes the methodology of this study.

Methodology

Analysis of accounting sources

Our research aims to situate the payments to the two renowned artists (Luca Giordano and Caravaggio) within the broader context of the construction and renovation project, in order to compare the prices paid for the paintings with other payments recorded at the same time in favour of a wide range of artists and artisans. To this end, we make use of primary sources kept in the archives of the Pio Monte, which registered records of all payments made in connection to the construction and decoration of the new church and palace.

For a more accurate tracking of the expenses sustained to build the new premises, Michele Blanch, the construction deputy, decided to keep dedicated accounts, distinct from the other activities of the Pio Monte. The resulting ‘special ledgers’ are preserved at the Historical Archive of the Pio Monte della Misericordia. They consist of two handwritten volumes of 111 and 123 pages, respectively, which recorded the charge-and-discharge accounts⁶ concerning all credits and debits connected with the construction works of the new premises (see Figure 1 for an example).⁷ Looking at the discharge accounts, it is therefore possible to reconstruct the evolution of the second construction project and the contribution of various artists, artisans, craftsmen and other professionals linked to the work.

Figure 1. First page of the ‘special ledgers’ reporting the accounts for the construction of the new church and palace of the Pio Monte della Misericordia.

Source: ASPMM: cat. A Fondazione - rubr. a Fondazione, n. V, vol. 9, registro 1 dei ‘Conti di spese di fabbrica della Chiesa e locale del Pio Monte’, f. 1.

To analyse these sources, all the discharge entries recorded in the special ledgers have been digitised and organised into a dataset.⁸ For each entry, the record contains its archival reference (volume and document), the entry date (day, month and year), the name of the recipient, his or her role, the reason (object) of the payment and its amount. All payments were expressed in units of account whereby one ducat was equivalent to ten carlini and 100 grana (Velde 2020, 409).⁹ For better comparability between entries, we have converted all payments to ducats with decimal values. Given the timeframe of the analysis, values are kept in nominal levels.¹⁰ As we focus our attention on the expenditures more directly connected to the construction of the new premises and the church, some extraneous entries have been excluded: these concerned payments to the Monte di Chiusano, the Casa Santa della Santissima Annunziata in Naples, the Regina Coeli Monastery in Naples and to the Governors of the Pio Monte della Misericordia. For the same reason, we have removed payments concerning the separate management of the legacy of Giovan Camillo Cacace, as well as the sums paid to the Prince of Ruoti for further purchases of houses and the payment of seven Roman scudi to Giuseppe Casanova ‘for a Papal assent so that the Pio Monte may change and remake the Guardsmen’s chapel, which is connected to the factory of the Monte and rebuild it elsewhere.’¹¹ Finally, we have also excluded the payment of 32 Roman scudi to Geronimo Manfredi, a carpenter, because we could not identify a specific date and reference for it. The result of the digitisation is a dataset that includes 1118 observations, each referring to a distinct payment.

Payments are distinguished by the craft and identity of the receivers and compared with the payment received by Luca Giordano for the Deposition of Christ. A similar analysis cannot be performed for the Seven Works of Mercy by Caravaggio due to the unavailability of similar primary sources for the construction of the first church and palace. However, we undertake an indirect comparison by deflating the payments to the two artists with some price indexes. In addition, another indirect comparison is provided with respect to the price of similar paintings sold in Naples and in Rome during the seventeenth century. The rationale for this comparison is explained in the next section.

Comparisons through the prices of paintings in Naples and in Rome

The analysis of the accounting sources kept at the archives of the Pio Monte allows us to compare the payments to artists with other expenses sustained during the construction of the new church and palace. The use of these primary sources supports the internal validity of our comparisons within the Pio Monte’s expenses, but they do not ensure external validity, that is, whether the payments to the artists by the Pio Monte were in line with the market prices fetched by the same artists and their contemporaries for commensurate work elsewhere. If, for instance, the Pio Monte paid an extraordinarily high price for the Deposition of Christ by Luca Giordano, our comparison with Pio Monte’s payments to other artists and artisans would be of limited interest beyond this case study. If, instead, the price paid to Luca Giordano is found to be in line with contemporary market rates, we can more safely assume that our analysis carries some validity outside of the Pio Monte.

In order to extend our analysis in this direction, we have used two data sources. First, a list of prices paid for 34 notable paintings commissioned for churches in Naples through the seventeenth century, which was published by Marshall (2010, 122). Second, a database reconstructed by Richard E. Spear regarding payments made to artists in Rome during the seventeenth century (Spear and Sohm 2010; Spear 2010, 147–150). This database is made available online by the Getty Research Institute within the Provenance Index® database.¹² The original database contains over 940 separate works of art, each featuring the title, the author, the nationality of the author, the price, the date of payment, the client, the place of collocation (mainly Rome, but other places are featured), the type of destination (be it an altar, side chapel, lunette, ceiling, etc.), the painting technique (oil paintings, frescoes, etc.), the dimensions, the subject, the number of figures and other annotations. To ensure the comparability of these data with the canvases purchased by Pio Monte della Misericordia, we restricted the sample only to altarpieces painted with oil technique between 1592 and 1710. Furthermore, in order to ensure the appropriateness of the comparison, we have normalised prices according to the size of the canvas. Therefore, for each artwork we have calculated the price per square metre of canvas. Since the dataset does not report the dimensions of some paintings, the sample size was reduced to 114 paintings after this procedure.

This dataset allows us to contextualise the acquisition of the Deposition of Christ and the Seven Works of Mercy in two ways. First, the price paid for each of the two paintings can be compared with the prices paid for other paintings by the same authors around the same time in Rome, in order to establish whether the price paid by the Pio Monte was unusual for each artist. Second, the payments to the two artists are compared with those paid to contemporaries who sold similar canvases (oil altarpieces) in Rome around the same time. This second comparison helps to establish whether the two artists fetched extraordinary prices for their respective periods, or whether they were in line with the going market rates, taking into account the artists’ notoriety and technical characteristics of the paintings.

Results from the accounting data

Payments for the construction of the new church over time and by craft

We start the analysis by describing the payments recorded for the construction of the new church and palace, before turning to the comparison with the price fetched by Luca Giordano for the Deposition of Christ. The first observation in the dataset was dated 9 November 1658 and it concerned the payment of 30 ducats to architect Francesco Antonio Picchiatti for the drawings of the church. The last observation, a payment of over 6 ducats to the stone carver Alessio Vitolo, is dated 16 December 1679. It should be noted that the source reports not only the expenses settled during the construction period of the new church and palace (1661-1672), but also the costs sustained for further interventions, improvements, and decorations that were carried out for some years after the completion of the works. However, as Figure 2 shows, the vast majority of the payments dated to the construction period, with an acceleration after 1667.

Figure 2. Number of payments for the construction of the new church and palace.

Source: Authors' elaboration on data from ASPMM: cat. A Fondazione - rubr. a Fondazione, n. V, vol. 9, registro 1 e 2 dei ‘Conti di spese di fabbrica della Chiesa e locale del Pio Monte’.

The descriptive statistics in Table 1 show significant variability in the levels of expenditures, especially in the planning phase (1658-1660). The fluctuation of the annual sums narrowed towards the end of the construction works (1668-1672), and especially afterwards (1673-1679), also due the smaller number of payments.

Table 1. Summary statistics of the 1658–1679 payments (in ducats).

Year	Mean	Standard deviation	Median	First quartile	Third quartile	Number of payments
1658	24.00	8.49	24.00	18.00	30.00	2
1659	136.15	229.00	50.00	18.00	100.00	26
1660	83.10	81.36	57.97	12.00	100.00	26
1661	60.46	32.24	52.80	35.00	91.00	67
1662	57.37	60.06	50.00	23.45	73.60	85
1663	76.71	53.93	71.63	39.59	108.00	57
1664	86.39	102.63	71.94	45.70	108.00	66
1665	82.47	119.38	52.10	36.15	76.10	36
1666	66.78	68.21	44.00	23.70	85.80	79
1667	82.61	81.13	62.33	24.85	100.00	66
1668	95.16	91.33	60.00	30.50	145.50	119
1669	52.60	60.15	25.00	17.65	50.00	65
1670	41.08	39.00	25.00	17.78	50.00	147
1671	36.08	44.45	26.00	13.30	41.20	109
1672	41.21	97.18	16.19	10.00	28.76	82
1673	27.77	21.11	19.99	12.00	45.00	20
1674	29.48	26.54	20.00	10.50	38.06	12
1675	24.43	20.62	21.45	10.00	30.00	11
1676	17.74	8.45	15.00	12.00	20.00	26
1677	30.19		30.19	30.19	30.19	1
1678	46.60	48.11	32.50	20.13	47.53	8
1679	36.46	41.25	30.00	9.06	37.94	8
1658–1660	106.45	169.75	50.00	15.80	100.00	54
1661–1672	62.16	73.88	41.35	20.00	82.00	978
1673–1679	27.14	25.79	18.58	12.00	74.02	86
Total	61.60	79.88	40.00	18.00	79.27	1,118

Source: Authors’ elaboration on data from ASPMM: cat. A Fondazione  – rubr. a Fondazione, n. V, vol. 9, registro 1 e 2 dei ‘Conti di spese di fabbrica della Chiesa e locale del Pio Monte’. All amounts are expressed in ducats at current prices.

According to Alessandro Corona, the construction of the new palace and church cost almost 68,300 ducats (Corona 1743, 51). This figure is coherent with the sum of the digitised accounts: according to our dataset, the total expenses, in the entire period 1658-1679, amounted to approximately 68,874 ducats. Figure 3 shows the trend in annual expenditures: after an acceleration at the start of the construction works, the total payments stabilised to an annual average of 5478 ducats, peaking at an extreme value (almost 12,000 ducats) in 1668. After the completion of the main works, payments became less frequent and smaller in amount, therefore the total annual expenditure dropped to an average of 415 ducats. It should be noted that, in this period, the Pio Monte allocated about 15,000 ducats on average per year to charitable works (Sodano 1994, 373–472); therefore, the average budget allocated to the renovation project fluctuated between one third and one fifth of the resources spent on the main activities of the institution.

Figure 3. Total value of payments for the construction of the new church and palace by year, 1658—1679.

Source: Authors' elaborations on data from ASPMM: cat. A Fondazione – rubr. a Fondazione, n. V, vol. 9, registro 1 e 2 dei ‘Conti di spese di fabbrica della Chiesa e locale del Pio Monte’.

Thanks to the details on the destination of each payment, it is possible to break down the expenses in relation to their object and the craft or professional category of those who received the payment. As previously mentioned, the Governors of Pio Monte commissioned the project for the new palace and church to architect Francesco Antonio Picchiatti, who is recorded as ‘engineer’. The first payment in his favour was recorded on 9 November of 1658, when he was paid 30 ducats for the designs of the new church. The architect continued to receive payments from the Pio Monte in the following years, especially for ‘measurements’ (at least once in 1659). Moreover, the Pio Monte established that, starting in 1660, Picchiatti would receive a fixed sum of 80 ducats per year for his involvement in the project. As shown in the first column of Table 2, during the early years these payments had almost annual frequency, but later payments were delayed for several years, most evidently in the period 1665–1668 (paid in one instalment in 1668) and in 1671–1672 (paid in 1678). Nonetheless, eventually Picchiatti received full compensation for his involvement, as noted in the final discharge entry in his favour.¹³ Overall, the accounts recorded a total of 1070 ducats paid in his favour between 1658 and 1678.

Table 2. Payments to the architect, to the supervisor and to the master, 1658–1679 (ducats).

Year	Architect	Supervisor	Master builder
(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
1658	30	18.00
1659	50	63.60	1,992.00
1660	30	72.00	1,130.05
1661	80	63.60	2,029.80
1662		70.00	2,130.45
1663	160	78.00	2,129.10
1664	80	133.74	2,408.02
1665		40.00	715.85
1666		242.95	746.52
1667	100	345.32	508.26
1668	240	250.69	1,635.92
1669		267.26	412.80
1670	140	633.93	664.58
1671		359.73	809.95
1672		162.08	595.98
1673			141.18
1674			307.62
1675			215.42
1676			235.00
1678	160		85.25
1679			197.71
Total	1,070	2,800.90	19,091.46

Source: Authors’ elaborations on data from ASPMM: cat. A Fondazione  – rubr. a Fondazione, n. V, vol. 9, registro 1 e 2 dei ‘Conti di spese di fabbrica della Chiesa e locale del Pio Monte’. All amounts are expressed in ducats at current prices.

The Pio Monte paid about 2800 ducats to the construction supervisor between 1658 and 1672. However, this sum did not represent only the remuneration of the supervisor, but it could also have included the budget to purchase construction materials and possibly the pay for unskilled workers. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish exactly the remuneration of the supervisor from the other items of expenditure. Moreover, the identity of the supervisor changed over the years: during the early months, this role was assigned to Antonio Galluccio, soon replaced by Paolo Lucente. The latter was fired sometime between November and December 1661, and in February 1662 the role was held by Giulio Romanelli, who remained supervisor of the construction works until the end.

The overall payments to the architect and the supervisor of the works amounted to approximately 6 per cent of the total expenses. A much higher share of the expenditures (almost 28 per cent) was, on the contrary, in favour of the master builder. In this case, however, most of the payments were probably destined to the purchase of materials or the financing of extraordinary expenses for construction adjustments and particularly complex works. Moreover, the role of the master builder was held by six different individuals over time, occasionally jointly. Payments in favour of the architect, the supervisor and the master builder amounted to almost 23,000 ducats, one third of the total recorded. In addition to the expenses for materials credited to the master builder, the special accounts show some direct payments to suppliers, in particular for wooden boards and lime batches. However, these expenses represented only about 12 per cent of the construction costs.

The remaining sums were paid, without intermediation, to craftsmen and artists. There was, however, a considerable imbalance between the different groups. As shown in Table 3 (column 7), payments to sculptors amounted to over 20 per cent of the total discharges, followed by those for stone carvers (14 per cent). The significance of such expenditures is due to both the large number of payments (see Table 3, column 2), and their high unitary value – 104 ducats on average for sculptors (median: 90 ducats) and 75 ducats for stone carvers (median: 53 ducats; see Table 3, columns 2-4). These expenditures are not surprising, considering that the Pio Monte hired the most famous Neapolitan sculptors of the time, including Andrea Falcone, Cosimo Fanzago and Salomone Rapi. Most of the expenses referred to the first of these sculptors: there are 51 individual payments recorded in favour of Andrea Falcone, for a value of 3760 ducats, and 55 joint payments with Pietro Pelliccia and Pietro Antonio Valentino, for a total value of 7916 ducats. Most of these payments referred to drawings and sketches, and the production of column capitals and marble statues.

Table 3. Payments disaggregated by craft, 1658–1679 (ducats).

Profession	Number of payments	Mean (ducats)	Median (ducats)	Standard deviation	Total (ducats)	Percentage
(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)
Master builder	364	52.45	33.85	70.95	19,091.46	27.72
Blacksmiths	52	133.64	45.96	198.57	6,949.38	10.09
Carpenters	76	50.15	40.16	39.81	3,811.18	5.53
Suppliers	101	82.64	69.22	73.24	8,346.79	12.12
Gilders	4	21.25	20.00	2.50	85.00	0.12
Architect	11	97.27	80.00	69.58	1,070.00	1.55
Maestro di Casa	12	53.36	28.16	60.44	640.30	0.93
Labourers	7	35.86	40.00	14.05	251.00	0.36
Master glazier	13	22.25	20.00	10.92	289.23	0.42
Stone carvers	132	75.03	53.33	57.20	9,903.48	14.38
Painters	3	18.83	20.00	11.79	56.50	0.08
Sculptors	135	104.22	90.00	85.26	14,069.94	20.43
Supervisor	154	18.19	13.31	16.92	2,800.90	4.07
Plasterers	24	31.32	22.50	38.22	751.70	1.09
Stonemasons	9	11.34	12.00	3.14	102.02	0.15
Other	21	31.19	20.00	40.36	655.06	0.95
Total	1,118	61.61	40.00	79.88	68,873.94	100.00

Source: Authors’ elaborations on data from ASPMM: cat. A Fondazione – rubr. a Fondazione, n. V, vol. 9, registro 1 e 2 dei ‘Conti di spese di fabbrica della Chiesa e locale del Pio Monte’. All amounts in ducats are expressed at current prices.

After sculptors and stone carvers, a significant part of the payments (10 per cent of the total) went to blacksmiths (tinsmiths and whitesmiths are also included in the same category). The average amount of 134 ducats (46 ducats the median) is particularly high, but it appears justified by the complexity of the works. For example, on 10 May 1664, the heirs of the locksmith Fabrizio de Martino were paid almost 800 ducats for 19 metal railings; the whitesmith Leone Amoruso received 100 ducats, on 14 December 1666, for some ‘locks and padlocks.’¹⁴

The other categories of workers (carpenters, plasterers, gilders, etc.) accounted for a much lower share of the payments recorded by the Pio Monte. Yet some of them maintained an ongoing and economically significant relationship with the Pio Monte throughout the construction project. Master carpenter Marco Rapestella Mandese, for example, received almost 1600 ducats from the Pio Monte between 1665 and 1668, with payments for a single job ranging from 20 ducats ‘for the work done on beams […] for the rooms in the upper part of the building’¹⁵ to over 100 ducats for more complex interventions, although his service was lent less frequently than that of sculptors and stone carvers. Other crafts collected lower sums, particularly carpenters, plasterers, and painters. Very few payments for the construction works went directly to unskilled workers. However, as mentioned above, because we do not know the exact destination of the amounts paid to the master builder, their share should be understood as a low bound.

The acquisition of paintings during the construction of the new church

The new church was primarily adorned with the paintings that had been purchased for the previous premises over the years. However, several new paintings were commissioned during the construction project, such as the Virgin Mary as a Child and Saint Anne by Giacomo di Castro, the Madonna della Purità by Andrea Malinconico (both c. 1670), and two canvasses by Luca Giordano – Christ and the Adulteress (c. 1660) and, most importantly, the Deposition of Christ (1671). The latter canvas was the most valuable work of art to be purchased during the construction of the new church: due to the artist’s celebrity and the value of the painting, it can be compared to Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy. The importance of the Deposition for its patrons can be inferred by the fact that it replaced the remarkable Burial of Christ by Giovanni Baglione, which had been purchased in 1608 for the sum of 120 scudi and was moved from the chapel to the sacristy of the new church.

Yet how did the acquisition of the paintings stand with respect to each other and the total expenses that the Pio Monte had sustained for the construction of the new church? For the Deposition, Giordano received 200 ducats, a very significant figure when compared with the payments to the other painters. According to the bookkeeping records, Giacomo di Castro was paid a total of 70 ducats for his Virgin Mary as a Child and Saint Anne and some other minor paintings.¹⁶ Whilst the accounting sources in our possession do not record the payments for Andrea Malinconico’s Madonna, Corona indicates that he received 38 ducats (Corona 1743, 52).

The payment received by Giordano was also 25 per cent higher than the average annual payments to marble sculptors: Pietro Pelliccia, who was in charge of the most important stone works between 1664 and 1665, would have had to produce about 20 capitals and various ledger stones to obtain the same figure. Finally, the architect Francesco Antonio Picchiatti would receive the same amount of money every two and a half years of involvement in the project. Thus, the price paid to Luca Giordano does stand out with respect to other artists and craftsmen involved in the project. How much did it matter for the Pio Monte’s budget? Here, it appears that the price paid to Luca Giordano had little impact in comparison to the construction costs, for the Deposition of Christ amounted to only 4 per cent of the average annual expenditure sustained by the Pio Monte for the project.

In conclusion, this section has shown that the construction and renovation of the church was an expensive and complex project which required the participation of a large set of skilled workers. A significant share of expenses was due to the decoration of the church’s interior, and for this purpose some craftsmen maintained a collaboration with the Pio Monte for several years, in exchange for large sums of money. The acquisition of new paintings was a minor part of the payments. Nonetheless, painters could fetch high prices for their work in comparison to other artists and renowned craftsmen. In particular, the price of 200 ducats paid to Luca Giordano in 1671 appears especially high. Was this an extraordinary transaction, or was it justified by the notoriety of the author? How did it stand in comparison to the 400 ducats paid over 60 years earlier for Caravaggio’s painting? The next section discusses these questions drawing upon a range of secondary sources.

Contextualising the Deposition of Christ and the Seven Works of Mercy

A direct comparison of the payments to Giordano and Caravaggio

The previous section has shown that a wide range of artists and craftsmen was involved in the construction of the new church and palace of the Pio Monte, hence the acquisition of the most important artwork in this period, Giordano’s Deposition, accounted for a small share of the total expenses. Nonetheless, the price paid to Giordano was high, both in comparison to other painters and with respect to other artists and craftsmen. Can we say the same about the other masterpiece commissioned by the Pio Monte, Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy? Since we do not possess the accounts from the construction of the first church, we need to rely on a comparison between the two paintings and contextual information.

At face value, the price of 200 ducats paid to Giordano in 1671 was nominally lower than the 400 ducats paid to Caravaggio for the Seven Works of Mercy in 1606. Yet, the time distance between the two works requires further investigation than a mere comparison between the nominal prices of the canvases. This point is particularly salient in the case of Naples. The city experienced a generalised price increase between the end of the sixteenth century and the first quarter of the seventeenth century due to the Spanish Price Revolution (De Rosa 1987, 99–99; Costabile and Velde 2023, 939–943); it underwent a severe monetary crisis in 1622 (Velde 2018, 17–18); and it eventually experienced deflation through the 1640s (Velde 2018, 40–41; Costabile and Velde 2020, 11). In order to better assess both the significance of Luca Giordano’s work within the construction of the new church and the exceptional price paid to Caravaggio previously, it is thus necessary to identify some common reference points.

A first approximation would consist in deflating the price of the two works using an index of the cost of living in Naples during the seventeenth century. Such an index, however, is not readily available for the entire period. In order to achieve a relative approximation of monetary values, several methods can be used. Some price series were published by Coniglio (1952) for the period 1474–1646 and by Sartorelli et al. (1967) for the period 1647–1705. Using only the series of the price of wheat as deflator and fixing 1646 as the benchmark year, we find that the difference in the real value of the two paintings was smaller than their nominal price differential: the 400 ducats paid to Caravaggio in 1606–1607 would translate to about 261–265 ducats, while the 200 ducats paid to Luca Giordano in 1671 were equal to approximately 271 ducats. Alternatively, we substitute the series by Coniglio with the one published by Faraglia (1877, 22) for the 1603–1646 period, and using the same method, we find that the two artworks had an almost identical value in terms of purchasing power: at 1646 prices, Caravaggio's painting was worth between 260 and 306 ducats (depending on whether we use 1607 or 1606, respectively, as the year of payment), which is close to the value of Luca Giordano's painting.

Alternatively, we can deflate the price paid to Caravaggio with the consumer price index built by Allen (2001) for Naples in 1548–1645 and the price paid to Giordano using the weighted price index built by Sartorelli et al. (1967) for 1647–1705. The two series cannot be directly linked given that the baskets of goods considered in the two publications do not perfectly overlap and they use different weights and methods.¹⁷ Nonetheless, they can provide a more robust comparison of the price of the two paintings than the price of wheat thanks to the use of a larger basket of goods. Using the year 1645 as benchmark for Allen’s index, we obtain a value of 272 or 283 ducats for the price paid to Caravaggio (again, depending on whether we use 1606 or 1607 as the payment year); using the year 1647 as benchmark for Sartorelli et al.’s index, we get a value of 232 ducats for the price paid to Giordano. Thus, the results obtained from these different methods, although inevitably leading to different final values, point to a common conclusion: the value of the two paintings was more similar than their nominal prices would suggest, possibly due to the prolonged deflationary cycle that Naples experienced between the 1620s and the 1640s.

However, even setting methodological limitations aside, deflating the two canvases according to an approximate cost of living in Naples does not seem necessarily the most appropriate choice for comparing the value of works of art over time. In fact, various surveys have highlighted a secular trend in the price of artworks between the fifteenth and eighteenth century: estimates of hedonic prices show a continuous appreciation of artworks (particularly paintings) during the seventeenth century, especially in the Spanish market (Etro and Stepanova 2017). This result implies that the same price, even if assessed at constant values, could be exceptional at a certain time and ordinary some decades later. That is, it could be that Caravaggio’s canvas had a much higher price than the average contemporary altarpiece, while the price paid to Luca Giordano was in line with the average of the artworks sold in 1671. Evidence exists of a similar process in Naples during the seventeenth century: Marshall (2022, 43) argues that the works produced by Caravaggio in Naples and its influence on the local style strengthened artistic demand and, in conjunction with other external influences, raised the average price for paintings by notable artists after the 1620s, when prices for altarpieces in particular jumped from an average of 100 ducats to between 200 and 400 ducats.

To account for this rising trend in our comparison, it would be necessary to know the distribution of the prices of paintings in Naples in 1606 and 1671. A first comparison can be made with a list of payments for 34 notable paintings by 15 artists commissioned for churches in Naples through the seventeenth century, which was reported by Marshall (2010, 122). The list includes the Seven Works of Mercy by Caravaggio and three paintings by Giordano, each for a different decade (1661, 1675 and 1684), but not the Deposition. From the list, it appears that the price of 400 ducats paid by the Pio Monte to Caravaggio in 1606–1607 was between two and four times greater than the prices paid to local artists such as Caracciolo in the next two decades, and similar canvasses would start reaching the same or higher prices only after the 1630s (both considering their unitary value and price per square metre).

This increase can be partly attributed to the success of new masters, some of them coming from outside Naples, such as Jusepe de Ribera, who commanded significant prices towards the middle of the century (Marshall 2017, 68–69). These increases, however, were conditional on the artists’ notoriety: in 1661, at a time when he was receiving the first major commissions from the viceroy of Naples, Luca Giordano was still paid 100 ducats for the large canvas depicting The Patron Saints of Naples Adoring Christ on the Cross. By 1675, however, Giordano had become an established painter and was paid 200 ducats for a canvas representing the Martyrdom of St. Placidus (located in the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua), the same sum that he had been paid four years earlier by the Pio Monte. Hence, the price of the Deposition was high but not abnormal for the conditions of the market and the stage in the artist’s life.

This short comparison appears to support the common view that the payment to Caravaggio was high for the time, while that to Luca Giordano appears in line with the artist’s market rate and that of similar painters. However, the limited size of the sample does not allow us to derive a conclusive assessment. Hence, to strengthen our analysis we turn to a larger sample of payments to artists in seventeenth-century Rome for an indirect comparison.

An indirect comparison through payments made to artists in seventeenth-century Rome

Despite the peculiarities of the Neapolitan artistic demand (Marshall 2010, 116–119), the market for paintings in Italy during the seventeenth century was significantly integrated (Etro and Pagani 2012, 429–433). Painters and sculptors used to move frequently between the major urban centres in search of new commissions and study opportunities. Therefore, it is unlikely that the prices of artworks were influenced by local price levels alone. It is plausible, instead, that the real value of these works, although expressed in different currencies, was similar between the various Italian cities. This hypothesis appears even more convincing in the case of great masters such as Caravaggio and Giordano, who demonstrated considerable market power. These indications suggest comparing the value of the two canvases with the prices paid on the Italian arts market in the same years. We therefore perform a comparison between the prices of the two paintings purchased by the Pio Monte della Misericordia and the prices on the primary market for paintings in Rome between the 1590s and the 1700s. The choice of the market in Rome is motivated not only by the availability of more extensive price data for this city, but also by the proximity of Rome to Naples and the frequent artistic contacts between the two cities.

As was anticipated in the methodology section, the data used for this comparison are a subset of Richard Spear’s payments to artists database, which we have selected to ensure the comparability of the canvasses with the Deposition of Christ and The Seven Works of Mercy. In our sample of Spear’s data, the average price of an oil altarpiece in Rome in the seventeenth century amounted to 343 scudi, that is, 38 scudi per square metre painted. However, by disaggregating the data on the paintings by the decade we find a large variance, both between and within decades (Figure 4). In these calculations we have excluded some extreme values, which are attributable to paintings whose prices are deemed uncertain by art historians.¹⁸ Among the most expensive canvases, some are attributed to Domenichino, Pietro da Cortona and Salvator Rosa, whose works, notoriously, fetched exceptionally high prices. The most expensive canvas in the dataset after the cleaning is The Institution of the Eucharist (also known as the Communion of the Apostles) painted by Federico Barocci for the chapel of Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in Rome, with a reported price of 1483 scudi. The singularity of this price is not surprising, given both the complexity and the duration of the work, as well as the unusual events which characterised its creation (Spear 2003, 313; Tomasi Velli 1997).

Figure 4. Payments to artists in Rome for altar pieces by decade.

Source: Authors' elaborations on data from R.E. Spear (2010, 147-150). The database is hosted by the Getty Research Institute within the Provenance Index® database. Oil-on-canvas only, prices expressed as scudi per square metre of painting. Number of observations: 114. The graph does not show the outliers (five in total).

Therefore, excluding only the most extreme and least documented cases, it is possible to compare the price of the canvases purchased by the Pio Monte with the average prices of the works of art in Rome at the beginning of the seventeenth century and around 1670. To make this comparison, however, it is first necessary to convert the price of Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy and Luca Giordano’s Deposition of Christ from Neapolitan ducats into Roman scudi. To this end, we used the historical series of the exchange rate between Julius X’s scudo and the Neapolitan ducat published by Luigi De Rosa (1955). After the conversion, we find that Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy, paid 400 Neapolitan ducats in 1607, was equivalent to 344 Roman scudi, while Giordano’s Deposition, costing 200 ducats in 1671, was worth 185 scudi.

By comparing such prices with the paintings in the Rome dataset, we find that the sum obtained by Caravaggio was higher than the amounts he had received two years earlier in Rome for his Madonna dei Pellegrini (200 scudi) and his San Matteo and the Angel, which he had painted in 1602 and sold for 150 scudi. The price of the Seven Works of Mercy was also significantly higher than the 75 scudi paid by the Archconfraternity of the Pontifical Grooms in the same year for the Madonna and Child with St. Anne, also by Caravaggio, which was shortly thereafter bought by Scipione Borghese for 100 scudi. The price paid by the Pio Monte is, however, perfectly aligned with that of San Matteo and the Angel (located in the Roman church of St. Louis of the French), after accounting for the different sizes of the paintings: the Seven Works of Mercy cost 33 scudi per square metre, against the 36 for the of San Matteo and the Angel. Moreover, if we exclude the exceptional price obtained by Barocci, in the first decade of the seventeenth century, the average price of oil altarpieces in Rome was exactly 33 scudi per square metre. The painting by Caravaggio purchased by the Pio Monte in 1606 is thus perfectly comparable to both the prices that Caravaggio typically obtained on the Roman market, and with those of his most famous contemporaries.

Making a similar comparison for the Deposition of Christ by Luca Giordano proves difficult, as no oil-paint altar piece by this painter can be found in the Rome dataset. However, Spear’s dataset indicates in the notes to the Virgin and Saint Mary Magdalene of the Pazzi Family (a painting completed in 1682 by Ciro Ferri for the Church of Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi), that Giordano painted two canvases, located on either side (i.e. Jesus and Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi and the Virgin presents Baby Jesus to Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi) for a total price of 300 scudi, which is coherent with the 185 scudi that the Pio Monte had paid a decade earlier for a single canvas. The price paid by the Pio Monte also appears to align with that of contemporary paintings, even though the dataset includes only eight works of art from the decade between 1670–1679. The average price of an oil altarpiece in this decade was 142 scudi, or 27 scudi per square metre of painting, and the Pio Monte paid 29 scudi per square metre for the Deposition. Furthermore, it should be noted that the prices recorded in Rome in this period certainly did not concern minor artists: in fact, the available data include paintings by Baciccio, Borgognone, Pietro Locatelli, Ciro Ferri and Salvator Rosa, among others. The price paid by the Pio Monte for Luca Giordano’s Deposition of Christ also matches the prices fetched by similar masters around the same years.

Discussion of the results

The analysis carried out in the previous sections has provided two kinds of insights, one specific to our case study, the other of more general relevance. With respect to our case study, the results have largely confirmed the consensus of art historians on the significant monetary value commanded by the two paintings of Caravaggio and Luca Giordano at the time. Common characterisations based on contracts and anecdotal evidence suggest that the prices paid by the Pio Monte for the altarpieces were high for the time and were justified by the great esteem of the two masters, the artistic quality of the paintings, and their symbolic function for the identity of the confraternity. We have confirmed this assessment by broadening the comparison to all the payments that the Pio Monte sustained for the construction and decoration of the new church and palace, around the time of the acquisition of Giordano’s altarpiece. After accounting for the size of the commissions, the prices paid for these two works of art do stand out from transactions that the Pio Monte recorded with other artists.

Alternatively, the comparisons with payments to other famous artists in Naples and Rome have shown that the prices paid by the Pio Monte to Giordano and Caravaggio were in line with both the artists’ own going rates and those of comparable competitors. Moreover, the analysis of all other payments has shown that the total expenses sustained by the Pio Monte for the construction and decoration of the new church and palace were far greater than the prices of the two paintings, which represented a minor share of the costs. In fact, repeated transactions over the whole project led to very sizeable amounts being paid in favour of craftsmen, especially to sculptors, stone carvers and blacksmiths. This evidence suggests that, when assessing the Pio Monte’s role in sustaining the creative industries, one should consider not only traditional arts patronage but also expenses for buildings and their decoration. The employment of a wide range of minor artists and artisans represented the largest economic contribution of the Pio Monte to the art industry of contemporary Naples.

This consideration leads to the second and broader insight of the article. Our case study promotes the view that Christian brotherhoods were central institutions to the financing of the creative industries in early modern Europe. Yet, our results demonstrate that this role was exercised not only through the patronage of great masters, but also through the commissioning of a large number of lesser-known artists, craftsmen and other creative professionals that became involved in the institutions’ many artistic efforts. This argument has two implications for the literature: First, it suggests that a comprehensive economic history of the arts should not be limited to the systematic study of the prices of famous works of arts but should also include payments for less impressive but more common creations. This study appears particularly important in historical contexts where the line of demarcation between artists and craftsmen was more blurred, such as in seventeenth-century Naples. Second, this argument proposes that the accounting records of religious brotherhoods can provide rich sources for such comprehensive studies. Institutions such as the Pio Monte were major promoters of the creative industries and thanks to their advanced recordkeeping and accountability practices, they can provide the necessary depth and breadth of information.

These reflections suggest possible directions for future research. For the purposes of an economic history of the arts, it would be useful to extend the analysis to multiple religious institutions operating in the same area around the same period, in order obtain a broader coverage of the local creative industries. This approach, however, would require a comparative study of accounting practices between the different institutions, in order to ensure the comparability of their records. Thus, our conclusion points to further interdisciplinary research between the two disciplines.

Conclusions

This study has provided an analysis of the account ledgers detailing the construction of a church for the Pio Monte della Misericordia, a charity institution in Naples, between the years 1658 and 1679. Taking an ‘accounting [in] history’ approach, we have asked two specific research questions: How economically significant was the acquisition of paintings given the context of such a large artistic effort? How did the painters’ remuneration compare with respect to other artists and craftsmen?

After categorising over 1800 payments for the construction and decoration of the church, our research has shown that a wide range of artists, craftsmen and professionals participated in the project. In particular, sculptors, stone carvers and blacksmiths received reasonably high payments and the frequency of their involvement made them account for a large share of the total expenses. The most prominent figures (architect, supervisor, painters) received even higher unit amounts, but with less frequency than craftsmen and artisans. Paintings accounted only for a minor fraction of the total payments for the construction works. However, the price of 200 ducats paid to Luca Giordano for the Deposition of Christ was between three and five times higher than payments to contemporary painters Giacomo di Castro and Andrea Malinconico and was equivalent to over two years of involvement in the project for the architect Francesco Antonio Picchiatti.

To better ascertain the significance of Giordano’s remuneration, we have compared the price of 200 ducats paid to Giordano in 1671 and that of 400 ducats received by Caravaggio in 1606–1607. The long interval of time between the works of the two artists and the scarce availability of sources on the costs of construction of the first worksite limited the scope for a direct comparison between the two canvases. Therefore, the payments to Caravaggio for Seven Works of Mercy and to Luca Giordano for the Deposition of Christ were compared indirectly, referring to a sample of altarpieces commissioned during the seventeenth century.

Comparing the paintings by Caravaggio and Luca Giordano with contemporary works with similar characteristics (namely, oil-on-canvas altarpieces), it appears that the prices paid by the Pio Monte were in line with the prices in Rome for the two artists. Albeit high, these prices do not appear excessive when compared to the conditions of the art market, considering the notoriety of the authors and the quality of the works.

By contextualising the acquisition of the paintings within the broader construction and decoration project of the Pio Monte, our research has shown how accounting sources of religious institutions can be used to situate artists within their socioeconomic context. This approach, which builds on recent historiographical trends, can be of transdisciplinary interest to both economic historians of the arts and accounting historians.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Pio Monte della Misericordia and particularly its past Superintendent Alessandro Pasca di Magliano. We are also especially grateful to the Pio Monte’s archivist, Mario Quarantiello, who provided invaluable consulting work on the archival sources and retrieved and digitised for us the accounts of the construction of the new church contained in the special ledgers. We wish also to thank two anonymous referees for suggestions and the editor, Cheryl S. McWatters, for her advice and support throughout the review process. A previous preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 6th International Conference on Luca Pacioli in Accounting History, Naples 7^th–9^th November 2019. We thank participants at the conference for comments and suggestions. We remain solely responsible for the article and any remaining inaccuracies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data from the special ledgers for the construction of the new church and premises of the Pio Monte della Misericordia have been digitised specifically for this article and can be obtained by contacting the authors. The data on paintings’ prices in Rome in the seventeenth century have been extracted from the Payments to Artists Database produced by Richard Spear (see text and references for attribution) and available at the Getty Provenance Index®, https://piprod.getty.edu/starweb/pi/servlet.starweb?path = pi/pi.web. The Getty Provenance Index® is a registered trademark of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Robert Allen’s data on the consumer price index in Naples is available for download from Allen’s personal webpage at https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/people/sites/allen-research-pages/ under the heading Data – Age and Price History (Naples), accessed January 2024. For sources and methods, see Allen (2001), Appendix and Text. All other data presented in the article have been digitised from tables reported in secondary sources, as acknowledged in the text and captions.

Notes

1 In fact, until the 1630s, Neapolitan painters belonged with the same corporation as ‘gilders, playing-card decorators, miniaturists and rotellari (either wheelwrights or painters of wheels)’ (Marshall 2000, 16).

2 It is important here to note that the Pio Monte was exempted from the ordinary supervision of the diocesan bishop thanks a special concession by the Pope (Gazzara 2003, 51–52).

3 For a recent assessment of research on medieval and early modern confraternities see Eisenbichler (2019), especially part 3. On confraternities in Southern Italy specifically, see contributions in D’Andrea and Marino (2022).

4 ASPMM, ‘Fondo Antico’ series, Ld/5, fol. 203, quoted in Gazzara (2019).

5 ASPMM, ‘Governo del Monte’ cat. H – ‘Conclusioni’ rubr. b, vol. 5, 1650-1658, folio 249. On 23 July 1656 the Governors of the Monte decided to ‘establish the new factory and to lay the first blessed stone’. Here and in the rest of the text, translations from the Italian sources are our own.

6 For a recent comprehensive overview on the evolution of the charge-and-discharge system, see Llibrer Escrig and Villaluenga de Gracia (2023). On the difference with the double-entry system, see also Lemarchand (1994).

7 ASPMM, cat. A Fondazione – rubr. a Fondazione, n. V, vol. 9, registro 1 e 2 dei ‘Conti di spese di fabbrica della Chiesa e locale del Pio Monte.’

8 The retrieval and digitisation of the sources into an electronic dataset was carried out on our request by the Pio Monte’s archivist, Mario Quarantiello, to whom we express our deepest gratitude (see Acknowledgments). We have performed checks on a random sample of entries from photos of the sources to establish the accuracy of the digitisation work.

9 At times, expenses were also reported in tarì. One tarì was equivalent to two carlini.

10 Velde (2018, 41) shows that prices remained largely stable in Naples between the 1660s and the 1670s, both in absolute terms and relative to the previous decades.

11 ASPMM, cat. A Fondazione – rubr. a Fondazione, n. V, vol. 9, registro 1, folio 79r.

12 Getty Provenance Index®, https://piprod.getty.edu/starweb/pi/servlet.starweb?path=pi/pi.web, accessed November 2019. The Getty Provenance Index® is a registered trademark of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

13 ASPMM, cat. A Fondazione – rubr. a Fondazione, n. V, vol. 9, registro 2 dei ‘Conti di spese di fabbrica della Chiesa e locale del Pio Monte,’ 121.

14 Ibid., registro 1, folio 86r.

15 Ibid., registro 1, folio 60r.

16 In his reconstruction, Alessandro Corona reported a slightly lower figure (50 ducats), in reference to both the Virgin Mary as a Child and Saint Anne and to other minor paintings (Corona 1743, 52).

17 From Allen’s dataset we use the ‘new CPI’ expressed in local currency (carlini), setting the benchmark year to 1645. The data are available for download from Robert Allen’s personal webpage at https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/people/sites/allen-research-pages/ under the heading Data – Age and Price History (Naples), accessed January 2024. For sources and methods, see Allen (2001).

18 These include The Raising of Lazarus by Caravaggio, whose price of 1000 scudi has been often contested.