What do you think?
Rate this book
Marks of Opulence: The Why, When and Where of Western Art 1000–1914
A sweeping, beautifully written history of artistic patronage from 1000 to the present day by a Wolfson Prize-winning historian.
‘Marks of Opulence’ is a magisterial survey of European art and artistic patronage from 1000 until the birth of modernism. Tracing the history from the discovery of silver in the Harz mountains, through the catastrophic effects of plague in the 14th-century, to the studied magnificence of papal and royal courts in the 16th- and 17th-centuries, Platt shows how the great and the good have always used art to bolster political power.
Arguing that the acquisitive instinct – felt by all of us in different ways – is central to the history of Western art, Platt traces how art began to move out of the palaces of the aristocracy into the homes of merchants, bankers and industrialists. From the mid 19th-century onwards, and in the pre-war Belle Époque in particular, it was the immensely wealthy 'robber barons' and their widows – in London and Paris, in Berlin and Vienna, in Moscow and Barcelona, in Philadelphia and New York – who collected the work of the most innovative artists and broke the hold of the Academies on Western art.
Professor Platt's ambitious sweep through a thousand years of artistic endeavour in the West argues throughout that a superfluity of money is the chief driver of high achievement in the arts, and for the transforming power of great riches.
Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.
‘Marks of Opulence’ is a magisterial survey of European art and artistic patronage from 1000 until the birth of modernism. Tracing the history from the discovery of silver in the Harz mountains, through the catastrophic effects of plague in the 14th-century, to the studied magnificence of papal and royal courts in the 16th- and 17th-centuries, Platt shows how the great and the good have always used art to bolster political power.
Arguing that the acquisitive instinct – felt by all of us in different ways – is central to the history of Western art, Platt traces how art began to move out of the palaces of the aristocracy into the homes of merchants, bankers and industrialists. From the mid 19th-century onwards, and in the pre-war Belle Époque in particular, it was the immensely wealthy 'robber barons' and their widows – in London and Paris, in Berlin and Vienna, in Moscow and Barcelona, in Philadelphia and New York – who collected the work of the most innovative artists and broke the hold of the Academies on Western art.
Professor Platt's ambitious sweep through a thousand years of artistic endeavour in the West argues throughout that a superfluity of money is the chief driver of high achievement in the arts, and for the transforming power of great riches.
Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.
- GenresArtHistoryArt History
426 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2004
2 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 27, 2015
A strange book. It's not really a history of art. It's not really an economic history. It's a strange combination. Platt looks only at the large picture--artistic and economic and political trends but you don't really get up close. Strangely, the many illustrations in the book are not connected in any way--he doesn't refer you to images while discussing art and I got too lost to figure out if images he mentions are shown in the book (they are broken up into sections). You get a lot more about architectural developments than any other art especially since this definitely 'followed the money.' I still don't know what to think about this. It wasn't a bad book but I'm confused as to its purpose.
October 15, 2025
If you can tolerate murky prose, lengthy re-hashings of largely irrelevant European history, extensive lists of names and elite dynasties (often unexplained) and recherché terms (‘sedilia’, ‘reredos’, ‘obedientiaries’, ‘convolvulus’) ...
And if you're content to learn little or nothing about how works of art were commissioned, produced on the basis of schooling and apprenticeships, paid by patrons, brought to market via brokers, auction houses and galleries, plundered or falsified, made price- and praise-worthy by ‘influencers’ of the day and acquired for public display in museums …
If that's what you can put up with, this is a book for you.
It wasn’t for me.
And if you're content to learn little or nothing about how works of art were commissioned, produced on the basis of schooling and apprenticeships, paid by patrons, brought to market via brokers, auction houses and galleries, plundered or falsified, made price- and praise-worthy by ‘influencers’ of the day and acquired for public display in museums …
If that's what you can put up with, this is a book for you.
It wasn’t for me.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews