138 De Zeventiende Eeuw 31 (2015) 1, pp. 138-158 - eISSN: 2212-7402 - Print ISSN: 0921-142x Mediators of trade and taste Dealing with demand and quality uncertainty in the international art markets of the seventeenth century Claartje Rasterhoff and Filip Vermeylen Claartje Rasterhoff works as post-doctoral researcher at the department of Media and Cul- ture at the University of Amsterdam, and as project coordinator of the research program Creative Amsterdam: An E-Humanities Perspective (create). Her research concentrates on the organization and evolution of cultural industries in the early modern as well as the modern period.
[email protected] Filip Vermeylen (Ph.D. Columbia University 2002) is Professor of Global Art Markets at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. He lectures and publishes on various aspects of the economics of art and culture. He is especially interested in the history and functioning of art markets since the Renaissance, the notion of quality in the visual arts, the role of intermediaries as arbiters of taste, and emerging art markets such as India. Between 2009 and 2015, he was the program director of the nwo-research project Cultural Transmis- sion and Artistic Exchanges in the Low Countries, 1572-1672.
[email protected] Abstract Early modern Antwerp-based art dealers exported a variety of luxury goods across Europe and beyond. They traded locally and globally in mass-produced and unique goods of fancy, in newly produced and resold items. Our contribution examines the business models of these dealers in order to better understand the extraordinary reach of the early modern international art trade and its cultural ramifications.