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Gift exchange and art collecting: Padre Sebastiano Resta's drawing albums
Art Bulletin, The, Dec, 1997 by Genevieve Warwick
The collection of art in early modern Europe, like the Trobriands' shells, served to define social status. This was increasingly the case, as Krzysztof Pomian has argued, as objects moved from functional contexts to that of the collection. In making this transition, an object such as the artist's sketch shed one set of uses in order to gain another: from workshop tool used in the preparation of works in other media to elite collectable used to signify social distinction. Resta consciously sought to transform the drawing in this way, moving it from the workshop to the studiolo in order to ennoble the status of the artist's sketch, and so of himself as collector of objects with this semiotic power.(19)
Mauss stressed that gift giving could be set amid different kinds of exchanges carried out within the same society.(20) What distinguished gift giving, he found, was not different economic systems but different social aspirations. Elites engaged in a form of trade in which the motive for gain was sublimated to demonstrate that they did not depend on financially remunerative work. Gift giving perfectly expressed economic independence, for it took place as if exchange were not its purpose. Each "player" practiced trade through making gifts, transforming the trader's labor into the nobleman's generosity.
Like Mauss's island chief, Resta made gift giving his preferred form of exchange in order to distinguish his aristocratic status from those economically dependent on trade. Although he sought to sell his albums of drawings at a profit, his trade was a noble one because he donated the proceeds to alms for the poor. From what his patrons bestowed Resta also made a return for the gifts of drawings he had received. He did this in two ways: through a material return of either some money or gifts of loose drawings remaining to him and through an enhanced social prestige conferred by association with Resta's noble project.
Whether through the extravagant spending of aristocratic patronage or, as in Resta's case, through donation to charity, the logic of the gift obliged the participant to give away in order to receive. Similarly, the receiver was honor-bound to return the gift; to fail to do so was to be beholden and so to lose rank. Resta understood that the obligation to give insured the continuous circulation of wealth. For example, in return for the many drawings received from his Bolognese fellow collector, Giuseppe Magnavacca, Resta promised funds to cover his friend's costs and made a small return of twelve drawings by Giulio Campi "so that you will send me more and I can finish my book."(21) Magnavacca's gifts continued to circulate, for Resta placed the drawings in his albums and gave them to prospective patrons; in return, they made financial donations to Resta's charity. Examples of gifts from Magnavacca include a pen sketch that Resta related to Correggio's Deposition [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED], part of an album that Resta was later to present to Bishop Marchetti.(22)
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