Sotheby’s and Gagosian veteran publishes ‘History of the Art Market’

When Valentina Castellani was invited to teach a course on the history of the art market from the Renaissance to the present at New York University, she encountered a roadblock in preparing a course syllabus, despite her expertise in the subject and long-standing art market experience at Sotheby’s and Gagosian.

“I couldn’t find a book that really covered all of this,” she said in a phone interview. “There are many excellent books and scholarship on these periods, but I couldn’t find one that provided the entire panorama.”

Her upcoming book aims to fill this gap Trading Beauty: A History of the Art Market from Altar to Gallerypublished by Gagosian himself. (Castellani said the book had been completed when Gagosian made the offer, and the gallery and dealer had no input into its content. According to Castellani, the book barely mentioned the gallery’s famed founder, Larry Gagosian.)

The cover features new art by Maurizio Cattelan, and inside is an introduction by Massimiliano Gioni, the New Museum’s artistic director. The work will be available at Gagosian stores on May 1 for $40 and will be distributed by Rizzoli in the fall.

In the earliest times described in the book, the Catholic Church and the nobility dominated the art market. She then discusses topics such as the birth of the first free market in the Netherlands in the 17th century and the establishment of state-supported and controlled academies and royal manufactories under King Louis XIV of France. With the birth of Impressionism came the gallery system, conceived by early Parisian dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Since then, the system has grown by leaps and bounds, even to the point where art galleries are hosting museum-quality exhibitions. Growth in the China and Middle East markets is also considered, along with changes in the market following the Covid-19 pandemic, including the rise of digital technologies and demographic and generational changes.

Important historical developments in the auction world are also taken into account, such as the sale of Leonardo da Vinci Savior The $450.3 million sale at Christie’s in New York in 2018 made it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction, along with the 1958 sale of the Goldschmidt Collection at Sotheby’s in London, and Damien Hirst’s recent sale of his own work at the 2008 “Forever Beautiful in My Mind” sale at Sotheby’s in London.

The author was associate director at Sotheby’s in London and New York, followed by 11 years as senior director at Gagosian Gallery in New York, where she led exhibitions dedicated to artists such as Francis Bacon, Lucio Fontana and Pablo Picasso. Since 2019, she has taught at NYU Steinhardt School as an adjunct professor in the Master of Visual Arts Management program.

She said an important book for her approach was Arnold Hauser’s 1951 social history of art. “I studied it in college, and it deals with the economic and social context in which art is produced,” she said. “Among the different market models, each the result of unique economic, political, social and religious circumstances, each changes the way we value artworks.”

She said that while today we tend to think of artists as individual creative geniuses, her purpose was to illustrate how they were often driven by the desires and dictates of their patrons, especially in earlier eras. For example, she tells the story of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, which features Giotto’s famous painting. “These paintings were commissioned by Enrico Scrovini as an atonement for usury,” Castellani said. “Enrico’s father was a loan shark and Dante sent him to Hell, and Enrico didn’t want to follow in his footsteps, so he asked Giotto to paint this church. You can see him as one of the Blessed Ones on the right side of Christ, holding a model of the church.”

While Castellani doesn’t necessarily get caught up in the month-by-month ups and downs that fascinate art market journalists, she does make some observations about today’s world, where collections have been transformed by factors like social media and changing generational tastes—but she brings a historical perspective to them. For example, for her, a striking factor in the rise of patronage in the Middle East is the way in which models there look back to state and royal patronage, which was key in the early periods she discusses.

“It’s interesting to see how history repeats itself,” she said.