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Comment by carpo | Hacker News Reader

It wasn't all through patronage though. I just finished listening to a biography of Leonardo da Vinci, and he was taught in a workshop, essentially as an apprentice. They would do independent commissions for people - portraits, statues etc. It's true that the great artists would get patronage once they were great, but it seemed that there were a bunch of these workshops with apprentices that copied the master's paintings, worked on commissions with them etc. Just thinking about it now as I write, and the Patronage is like the "made-it" moment where an artist gets rich, but I bet there were a multitude of apprentices that toiled away in workshops just making money for food.

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So, for the most part art was like everything else: If someone wanted it, they paid you to produce it. If you thought you could produce something people want you made it and maybe someone bought it. Or not. Same as a carpenter making a chair or a table. Maybe someone buys it, maybe not.

Then we got copyright and with it the idea that producing something gives you rights to every copy of it. Like a carpenter building a chair and laying claim to a chair someone else build, cause "they looked at my chair".

I think this is absurd, but many people seem to like it.

Isn't a bespoke commission just an act of patronage though? If I hire you to make something for me, I'm your patron.

I guess the main difference is that back then, you would sell the work and then make it. Nowadays, you make the work and then hope to sell it over and over again.

Well, I guess you could say that's a form of patronage, but "arts patronage" as a concept is more of a general sponsorship of an artist in the hope that they will produce significant works (and maybe have some influence over their production), rather than a transactional relationship where you are paying for a specific piece.

Patronage seemed like a more formal thing though. They lived with the patron who would provide them a workshop, food and money. Their early days in a workshop seemed more like an employee at a business, not much different than today. The owner would have to go and find work and tap his network to find people who needed his businesses wares. He would hire employees, and they would complete jobs under his supervision. When Leonardo da Vinci was 14 and working at a workshop he was an employee of the workshop owner. It took him a long time to get a patron. He even sent letters to rich people trying to get their patronage by saying what he could do (and just like today, there was a bit of "fake it till you make" in those letters too :)

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