Nobility as Patrons and Consumers of Cultural Goods: Insights from Family Archival Records
Cultural, social, intellectual, and spiritual patronage constituted one of the key elements in the construction and representation of noble identity in early modern Europe. As members of the social elite, noble families not only acted as patrons and commissioners of artistic and cultural production but also participated actively in the consumption of a wide range of cultural goods, luxury commodities, and everyday material objects. In doing so, they formed an important segment of the clientele upon which networks of artisans, merchants, and other intermediaries depended.
This paper examines these processes through the analysis of archival records preserved in the family fonds of three noble families whose estates were located in continental Croatia: the Vojkffy, Sermage, and Čikulini families. The study is primarily based on craftsmen’s and merchants’ accounts, inventories, property registers, and related documentation preserved within the respective family archives. By focusing on the surviving evidence of acquisition, commission, and consumption, the paper seeks to assess the potential of private family archives as sources for the study of noble patronage and material culture. Particular attention is devoted to the types of documents that have survived, the patterns of purchasing and commissioning they reveal, and the categories of goods and services that occupied a prominent place in the economic and representational strategies of noble households.
More broadly, the paper addresses the relationship between patronage, consumption, and the construction of aristocratic identity. It explores the everyday practices through which patronage was enacted and examines how accounting records, inventories, and property registers can illuminate the aspirations, values, and social ambitions that underpinned noble engagement with cultural production and consumption. In doing so, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the role of material culture in the processes of social representation and self-fashioning among the early modern nobility.
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Valentina Janković Barbarić received her PhD in Early Modern History from the University of Zagreb in 2013. She currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the Catholic University of Croatia in Zagreb. Her research interests encompass the cultural and social history of the early modern period, the history and identities of noble families, and the history of everyday life. She is currently a member of the Croatian Science Foundation project Models of Patronage: Patrons, Artists, and Audiences in Zagreb in the Seventeenth and the Long Eighteenth Century, which explores the dynamics of cultural patronage and artistic production in early modern Zagreb.
E-mail: valentina.jankovic@unicath.hr
