Saint Benedict staring at us: Clients as the third party in Modern Art. A theoretical model and a case study in Renaissance Venice

This paper aims at studying the role of clients as third party of the art system in Modern Times. To detect a possible third-party-relationship in art, the epistemological approach draws from art sociology and focusses on the economics of art production, though relying on the case-study-tradition of iconology in order to verify the suitability of the proposed theoretical model. The specific case study refers to the Venetian Renaissance studying the Frari triptych by Giovanni Bellini, painted at the end of the 15th Century and dealing with the religious dispute on the Immaculate Conception of the Madonna.