Valuing European tapestry: from riches to rags

To counteract the longstanding bias toward paintings, this paper offers a preliminary, diachronic exploration of the market for European tapestries. By combining qualitative and quantitative data from sales and collection inventories, historiographical sources, and secondary literature, we shed light on past and present valuation mechanisms for this once esteemed luxury good. First, we discuss the supply of tapestries in the Early Modern period before examining demand. We then consider buyers’ main motivations to commission woven works, including ostentation, devotion, lifestyle, and national identity building. Furthermore, we examine the characteristics that drove the medium’s market value in the past, such as city brand name, technique and material, size, genre, and condition. We also investigate the variables that still influence buyers’ willingness to pay in the contemporary auction market. The main contribution of this research is to highlight lesser-known works and markets that originated in the Early Modern period and that still represent a distinct segment of the art market in the present.