Introduction. Surviving images, texts, and artifacts from the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries provide scholars with a partial, somewhat opaque, picture of early modern society. Europeans of this period had ways of seeing and habits of thought that were profoundly different from modern ways. Scholars can only reconstruct the emotional tenor, belief systems, behavioral codes, and symbolic systems of this distant past. Analyzing the context, function, location, commission, and intended audience of visual culture is crucial to uncovering the various dimensions of meaning that contemporaries attributed to these works. Most artwork in early modern Europe was commissioned by either individuals or corporate institutions, such as church bodies, city governments, or guilds. Artists were at the center of a system of exchange, negotiating the contours of visual and spiritual reality, human knowledge, and understanding with their patrons and audiences.

Uses of Art. Art, even a specific work of art...