ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what written and pictorial evidence can tell us about early medieval artists and patrons. The image on the Milan altar lifts Wolvinus out of the anonymity and marginal social position that were characteristic for early medieval artists. Medieval artists worked under conditions very different from those of modern artists. The poem from the Milan altar tells us that Angilbert donated the altar in the express hope that Ambrose and God would look favorably on the gift and reward him with eternal life. One of the best statements of the motives of early medieval patrons and of the mechanics of patronage appears in a gospel book from Tours made around the middle of the ninth century for Charles the Bald's brother, Emperor Lothar I. The picture is meant to function as a mnemonic device, summing up and recalling for us the monks' desire that we, the viewers of the miniature, pray for Lothar.
