Prices in Art Markets
The issues of what makes individuals decide to buy, and how much they are willing to pay for art works, are both important.Mandeville concluded that the four determinants of the price of artworks are the relative fame of the artist, the reputation of the artworks’ owners, and the artworks’ scarcity and faithfulness to nature.Mandeville wrote:
The value that is set on paintings depends not only on the name of the master and the time of his age he drew them in, but likewise in a great measure on the scarcity of his works and, what is still more unreasonable, the quality of the persons in whose possession they are as well as the length of time they have been in great families ... Notwithstanding all this, I will readily own, that the judgment to be made of painting might become of universal certainty, or at least less alterable and precarious than almost anything else: the reason is plain; there is a standard to go by that always remains the same. Painting is an imitation of nature.