Studies on female patronage in the 17th and 18th centuries

Abstract

“Is this possible to define one universal model for female patronage?” asked Dionysios Stathakopoulos in “Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte,” indicating the complexity of the problems researchers of this issue are facing. Diverse financial, legal, social and family positions of women considered patrons by the historians prove how complicated a task stands before the researchers of this phenomenon. Pioneer works of Sharon Kettering concerning the specifics of female patronage in modern France provided justification for thorough investigation of actions of influential women in various spheres of everyday life. There were few similar works in Polish historiography. Particular attention should be paid to ideas formulated by Antoni Mączak, who defined rules of the patron-client relationship in the Polish Commonwealth, indicating the complexity of relations existing among nobility. Works of Urszula Augustyniak are also a valuable contribution. She paid particular attention to the need to appreciate the significance of informal relationships in the clerical system of the 17th and 18th century Poland, while highlighting the difference between relations existing in them and those rooted in systems of Western Europe. However, it should be noted that issues concerning the specifics of female patronage in the modern Polish Republic still remain unrecognised. This monograph aims to fill that research gap, at least a little. The presented collection of studies is simultaneously an announcement of further publications that will thoroughly present the conditions, character and mechanisms of operation of ties of patronage as well as multi-facetedly understood patronage with particular focus on the position women from noble families held in it. Issues discussed in this monograph are dedicated to the key problems the studies of female patronage base upon. Authors of articles took on the difficult task of defining the specificity and form of patronage in the modern era, and characterising the complex relations established and maintained by women from noble families. Particular emphasis has been put on an attempt to define the female patronage, its scope, factors influencing the client base establishment process, grasping the mechanisms of creating and maintaining female patronage and sponsoring, identifying personality of the patron and her relation with her client environment, listing various methods women use to carry out patronage in modern Europe, comparison of models by which female client circles operate, defining economical basis for implementing patronage – and finally estimating the scale of the phenomenon of female courts and forms of patronage they provided.