This contribution intervenes in debates on the social basis of early Netherlandish painting (ca. 1400–1550). While scholars agree that patronage was an important factor in explaining the growing popularity of painting, it is unclear which specific groups were responsible for artistic investment. Drawing on a corpus of around five hundred panel paintings, this article constitutes a quantitative and qualitative intervention in this debate. Apart from discussing the relative importance of domestic and foreign demand and how this changed over time, this article provides a critical discussion of how different elite configurations and related social change are important elements in understanding the nature and timing of this artistic efflorescence.
Bervoets et al. (Sun,) studied this question.