I have just started reading Stradivari’s Genius and was surprised to discover that 600 or more of his instruments still survive.
Assuming that they are all worth millions of dollars, he must have made over $1 billion worth of product with his own hands.
Now I will allow that he may have had underlings working alongside him but he wasn’t having stuff punched out in China and no machinery was employed. Antonio put his name to it because it was his product.
I could look up other possibilities but where’s the fun in that?
Who do you think, personally crafted the greatest total value of product?
Dunno. Cool question. Based on my watching of Antiques Roadshow, maybe it’s the nameless Indians who wove those million dollar chief blankets. That or Fabergé.
Interesting question. Leads to questions of the “value” of objects now, and what those values are based on [beauty, rarity, a “name”], vs. the value of the objects in the lifetime of the creator.
In any case, I think this is a better fit for IMHO, so I’m moving it thither.
I’m going with Vincent Van Gogh, possibly Pablo Picasso - Stradis go for* no more than* $15-million, tops, and that price was a major aberration for charity, the previous record being a quarter of that and the “average” is probably in the $1-2-million range.
Vincent painted around 900 paintings and did more than a thousand drawings. Just *seven *of those paintings together have been sold for $670-million. You do the math. And he had no assistance at all.
Picasso was probably more prolific, but I’m not sure if the combined value of his work sold so far exceeds Van Gogh’s, although it would not surprise me at all.
ETA; so yeah, what those guys said, only with numbers…
I once read that Picasso produced paintings that were worth a billion dollars in his lifetime. I cannot imagine what they are worth in 2011 dollars. I’ll go with him.