Renaissance Faces

Robert that is exactly it. If you see the famous painting ' Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife ' by Jan van Eyck, this painting shows off the sumptuous expensive fabrics of their clothes, the chandelier, the mirror ( which in those days, only very wealthy people could afford ) as well as the four poster mahogony bed and even the tangerines which were exotic fruit imported from the Orient and therefore expensive. They wanted to show off their wealth.

Yes, imagine what honour it must have been to be able to paint the most famous and distinguished personalities of their day and since at that time, photography was not available, a painting was the only way they had, to leave a lasting image of themselves for posterity, this is why the artist often painted their coats of arms or anything that would identify them in later centuries to tell us whose image we are looking at today.

It was a two way thing Robert, the more famous the painter was, then the customers would want to be painted by him, so their own prestige would be assured as well. An artist who had painted royalty any member of the nobility would aspire to commission the same artist too.

How much a painting was worth, depended very much on the pigments to be used and that is true then as it is today, since the most expensive pigments are red, followed by blue which in those days could only be done by grinding lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone, so the more red or blue you used on the painting, the more expensive the picture was going to be. On this day and age, a tiny tube of real lapis lazuli can set you off £80 pounds, but having said that, there are excellent artificial cheaper replacements like ultra-marine blue. The cheapest pigments to get are browns and all earth colours.