[ubertaco]

I mean, this is part of the story of Caravaggio, right? So much of the standards for art (if you wanted any patronage) at the time were around "what is the church willing to pay for", and Caravaggio alternated between painting stuff that would get him money from the church, and painting stuff that the church wouldn't condone (because of the unapproved ways he used particular symbols, or because they were just secular subject matter).

Well, that and his tendency to murder folks, of course. But that part's less relevant to the "how old is art-for-money-vs-art-for-art" discussion.