This study compares the economics of art and painting production in Safavid Iran, especially the Isfahan school, and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. It examines how changes in patronage and economic structures influenced painting media, execution, and criteria for assessing artworks’ material and technical quality. Using a descriptive analytical method informed by art sociology and economics, it considers workshop organization, guilds, and market relations in both contexts. Findings show merchants, bureaucrats, and urban elites expanded the range of commissioners beyond traditional patrons in both societies, although production followed different paths. In the Netherlands, commercial markets and the Guild of Saint Luke accompanied the spread of easel paintings on canvas, specialization in pictorial genres, and circulation of canvas and pigments. In late Safavid Iran, court and urban markets formed a dual system. The shift from lavish illustrated manuscripts toward single-page paintings and albums created independent, portable formats suited to new patrons’ means. Historical and material evidence suggests that the thesis of declining quality in late Safavid painting requires reconsideration. Linear drawing and reduced use of some expensive materials do not necessarily indicate technical deterioration; they may reflect changing demand, production speed, and individual expression. Media and execution should therefore be interpreted through economic conditions, artistic function, and commission type, not hierarchical comparisons between traditions.