The arts of collecting

"The Arts of Collecting: Padre Sebastiano Resta and the Market for Drawings in Early Modern Europe examines the collection of art through an anthropological examination of exchange and the social roles of material culture. Focusing on the collector Sebastiano Resta, Genevieve Warwick brings to light a crucial chapter in the history of collecting, that of the migration of art objects out of Italy to northern Europe during the late seventeenth century.

Her study pins the history of collecting to broader changes in European economic history and analyzes the epistemological frameworks for viewing that accompanied this transfer of artistic wealth. Warwick also demonstrates how early modern art collecting was shaped by the social mores of elite behavior, which equated the collector's possessive desires with the courtly ideals of the "arts of love"."--BOOK JACKET.