Keywords

• Commissioning sculpture in Italy was a complex and risky business for grand tourists
• but sculptors too increasingly found themselves at risk towards the end of the seventeenth century. Gentlemanly agreements
• based on the word of the most distinguished aristocrats were increasingly not honoured and sculptors ended up lumbered with very expensive works that could not be sold easily. This situation led to the widespread introduction of written contracts
• either signed in front of a public notary or conceived as private agreements. Agents chosen among the English mercantile community or among trusted resident artists supervised the execution of the works and the keeping of the agreements