Historically, people and institutions in positions of power like kings, nobles and big merchants, funded all kinds of content creators to outfit their palaces, cities, and buildings like country houses and government halls. If you were a content creator and had a powerful patron, your financial security basically guaranteed. During the Italian Renaissance, patrons either commissioned content creators on a work-by-work basis, or they fully took them into their estates, providing housing, food, clothing, etc., while the content creator was fully dedicated to his creation. In fact, depending on the scale of a project, a patron could fund a content creator for years.