#doyouworkoncommission

The Marquis of Mantua once wrote to the painter Mantegna: 

“I intend to give you fifteen ducats monthly as salary, to provide lodgings where you can live comfortably with your family, to give you enough grain each year to cover generously the feeding of six mouths, and also the firewood you need for your own use...” (found in Baxandall’s Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy.)