ABSTRACT
The growing demand for household goods in Renaissance Italy, as documented by Richard Goldthwaite and others, was the driving force behind the painted picture becoming the most popular household object within the homes of the urban elite. 1 In cinquecento Venice, which is the focus of this chapter, paintings become the most frequently listed object in inventories, overtaking and surpassing the presence of antiquities in Venetian households by the end of the sixteenth century. While the relationship between domestic art collecting and consumption is complex, the degree to which art collections contributed to Venetian domestic sociability – those social rituals that connected the family both to each other and to the wider society beyond the walls of the palazzo – deserves a closer look.
