Abstract
Recent art historical scholarship has begun to address the tangible connections between artistic production and mercantile endeavors, and the artistic commissions of the maritime republics of Italy have provided fruitful ground for this type of study. The wealth of these republics was based predominantly on international trade in the Mediterranean and the large expenditures by wealthy merchants in these cities on art and architecture raise the questions of how a distinct merchant culture determined a particular aesthetic or approach to artistic production and how this mentality was manifested in the artworks themselves. Spolia collections and mercantile tools--manuals and portolan charts and texts--became increasingly more complex and intertwined to reflect the opportunities and challenges faced by these merchant mariners in the fluid Mediterranean environment of the later Middle Ages.