Visualizing Art Trade Flows for a Seventeenth-century Antwerp Dealer

Focusing on data gathered from archives in Antwerp, Spain, Mexico and Peru on the commercial activities of the seventeenth-century international art dealer Guilliam Forchondt in Antwerp, this presentation shows how visualization tools can help us unpack what is behind the flows of paintings he exported throughout Europe and to the Americas. I will present some of the challenges of archival data collecting and processing, and the importance of an aggregate approach for historical art market analysis. In the case of Forchondt, sales data for the period 1644-1674 such as quantities, clients, destinations and descriptions of the imagery shipped allows us to identifying general trends, specific local preferences of buyers, and the key role of art dealers as mediators between the production and demand side through their networks.