This article seems to be claiming that somehow artists in the past got more money than artists now, and that simply is not true.
It’s survivor bias - we hear about these well funded artists because they were well funded. Other artists in the past could earn a living by doing portraits, etc to pay the bills - if they got lucky and became successful then they could do things outside of the norms. Nowadays the job of portraits, etc has been largely taken over by photographers, who use that to pay bills.
There has not been a historical period where just anybody could decide “i want to be an artist”, and then do just that and yet have enough money to pay bills, etc
