In his erudite and penetrating Painting and Experience in Fifteen Century Italy, Michael Baxandall writes: A fifteen-century painting is the deposit of a social relationship. On one side there was a painter who made the picture, or at least supervised its making. On the other side there was somebody else who asked him to make it, provided funds for him to make it and, after he had made it, reckoned on using it some way or other. Both parties worked within institutions and conventions — commercial, religious, perceptual, in the widest sense social — that were different from ours and influenced the forms of what they together made (Baxandall, 1988, 1). Baxandall's historical sketch highlights that in the fifteenth century paintings were made to order. Ready-made paintings hardly existed except for those of the Madonna for example that were made by mediocre painters. It was common for a customer to order a custom-designed painting, an altarpiece, or a fresco from a painter. Mostly this led to a legal contract between the customer and the artist.