From the ZSAP Reading List. . .

", , ,the economic context in which art was and is produced, distributed and consumed becomes part of the works themselves. The art historian Michael Baxandall has demonstrated, for intstance, that the way in which painters were rewarded during the Italian Renaissance directly influenced the execution of the painting. Patrons of art paid for each depiction of an individual and for the pigment used. The most expensive pigment that existed at that time, lapis-lazuli blue, thereby became a symbol of distinction. That is why the Virgin Mary can be identified in paintings from this time by way of the color of her gown."

both the quote and the suggested illustration, a detail from Piero della Francesca"s "Nativity", are from
Olav Velthuis' "Imaginary Economics: Contemporary Artists and the World of Big Money"