SESSION 2
Luxury and Consumption in Venice Primary Source Readings Selection of short primary source documents in translation from: Chambers, David, and Brian Pullan (eds.), Venice: A Documentary History 1450-1630. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. “A Magistracy to Administer Sumptuary laws, 1515”, 178. “The Regulation of Banquets, 1562”, 178 “The Regulation of the Wearing of Pearls, 1562”, 179. “Living Well: Supper and Conversation in Titian’s House”, 180-81. “Living Poorly: The Squalid Lodgings of Anton Francesco Doni, 1550”, 181-82.
Secondary Source Readings O'Malley, Michelle, and Evelyn Welch (eds.). ‘Introduction.’ In The Material Renaissance, 1-7. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007. Allerston, Patricia. “Consuming Problems: Worldly Goods in Renaissance Venice.” In The Material Renaissance, edited by Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch, 11-46. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007). Fortini Brown, Patricia. “Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites.” In Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilisation of an Italian City-State 1297-1797, edited by John Martin and Dennis Romano, 295-338. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
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Further Readings Kovesi, Catherine. “Luxury in the Renaissance: A Contribution to the Etymology of a Concept.” In Renaissance Studies in Honor of Joseph Connors: History, Literature and Music, edited by Machtelt Israëls and Louis A. Waldman, 236-242. Harvard University Press, 2013. Kovesi, Catherine. "What is Luxury? The Rebirth of a Concept in the Early Modern World." Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption (2015): 25-40. Fortini Brown, Patricia. “To Live Nobile.” In Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family, 53-90 and 268-272. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2004. Goldthwaite, Richard. “The Empire of Things: Consumer Demand in Renaissance Italy.” In Patronage, Art and Society in Renaissance Italy, edited by F.W. Kent and P. Simons, 153-175. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Welch, Evelyn. Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400-1600, 166-184 and 212-243. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005. Fortini Brown, Patricia. “Not Having the Name of Palazzo.” In Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family, 23-52. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2004. Kovesi Killerby, C. “Women and Sumptuary Law.” In Sumptuary Law in Italy 1200-1500, 111-132. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 2002. Humfrey, Peter, and Richard MacKenney. “The Venetian Trade Guilds as Patrons of Art in the Renaissance.” The Burlington Magazine 128.998 (May, 1986): 317-327, 329-330. Schmitter, Monika. “'Virtuous Riches': The Bricolage of Cittadini Identities in Early-Sixteenth-Century Venice.” Renaissance Quarterly, 57.3 (2004): 908-69.
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Conspicuous Consumption and Styles of Living Here the emphasis shifts from getting to spending, and from commercial disaster to the wilful dissipation of fortunes. Legal texts such as IV.21—3 are often valuable not as evidence of effective law enforcement, but as testimony to the practices that they condemn. Laws intended to restrain ostentation and lavish spending had been issued by Venetian councils at least since 1299, but only- in the late fifteenth century was their enforcement entrusted to a specialized magistracy, and only in the early sixteenth to a permanent one [IV.21]. Motives for the legislation were not always clearly stated, but these laws were almost certainly designed to encourage profitable investment rather than reckless expenditure; to save the fortunes of the ruling orders from erosion by ruinous competition between their members; to preserve the appearance of unity among nobles and citizens by forbidding the display of individual wealth; and,, on occasion, to prevent confusion between respectable and dishonourable women [see above, 111.6 (e)]. Like much other social legislation, they were also designed to prevent the community from angering God by luxurious living. There are two selections here [IV.22-3] from the code of sumptuary laws issued by the Senate in 1362; some of them repeated measures passed earlier in the sixteenth century. IV.24 and 23 are designed to contrast two styles of life in the artistic and literary circles of sixteenth-century Venice: that of a flourishing painter, Titian, and that of a struggling hack writer, as Anton Francesco Doni, a renegade priest from Florence, liked to portray himself. English travellers were impressed by the tendency of Venetian, as of other Italian, nobles to go in for conspicuous investment in building or parks, in things that lasted and. could be kept in families, rather than for conspicuous consumption on clothing, feasting and large retinues of servants (Cory at 1903 edn, I, 397-8, 413; Moryson 1907 edn, III, 492-3, and IV, 94). Perhaps, therefore, the sumptuary laws were not completely ineffectual, and not wholly at odds with social custom. Bibliography – In general: Newett 1902; Bistort 1912; Hughes 1983. On dress: Newton 1988. On Titian's style of life: Padoan, 1980. On Doni: Grendler 1969.
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21. A Magistracy to Administer Sumptuary Laws, 1515 Senate decree establishing the Provveditori sopra le Pompe, 8 February 1514 Venetian style (Bistort 1912, pp. 54-5). It can be plainly seen, and it has come to our attention, that in the city of Venice there is much gross and unnecessary expenditure on meals and banquets, on the adornment of women, and on the decoration of houses, so that fortunes are squandered and a bad example is set to those who seek to live modestly. It is proper, therefore, especially in these hard times, to make every effort to put these matters right, and so do honour to the majesty of God. BE IT DETERMINED, therefore, that by scrutiny of this Council there shall be chosen three commissioners to deal with all ostentatious acts and immoderate expenditure which contravene our regulations [tre proveditori nostri sopra le pompe et spese immoderate che sefano contra la forma de li ordeni nostri]. They must be members of the Senate, shall serve for two years, and may not refuse [election] upon a penalty of 500 gold ducats apiece, unless they are members of the Collegio. After two years the Councillors shall be obliged upon their oath to appoint others m their place, on the express condition that those currently in office may not relinquish it until their successors have been appointed; and, if during this period there should be a need to replace anyone, this must be done immediately, so that there are always three persons in office. They shall be empowered to reach decisions by the vote of two of them through the ballot box [per do de loro a bossoli et ballote], and appeals from them shall lie to the Collegio dei Venti Savi in Rialto, according to the resolution reached in our Great Council, observing at all times the decree concerning pledges. Of the fines which they impose, two thirds shall be divided between them and the office, and the remaining third shall go to the Arsenal. The present decree may not be revoked, suspended or altered unless the proposal is made by all the [Ducal] Councillors, by the Heads of the Forty, and by all the
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Savi of both orders, and unless it obtains five sixths of the votes of the Senate, assembled to the number of 150 persons or more.
22. The Regulation of Banquets, 1562 From a Senate decree of 8 October 1562 (Bistort 1912, pp. 378-81). Since acts of ostentation must be controlled in accordance with the most recent resolution of this Council, it is necessary to set out the regulations as briefly and succinctly as possible, that everyone may understand them better. Be it therefore determined that, at nuptial feasts, at banquets for public and private parties, and indeed at any meal of meat, not more than one course of roast and one of boiled meat may be provided. This may not include more than three kinds of meat or poultry, which must consist of the things which are permitted at nuptial feasts. Wild birds and animals, Indian cocks and hens, and doves shall be strictly forbidden. At meals of fish there may be two kinds of roast, two kinds of fried and two kinds of boiled fish, accompanied by antipasti, salads, dairy produce and other ordinary things, with a serving of the usual cake, marzipan and common sweetmeats. Banned from all banquets shall be trout from any place whatsoever, sturgeon, fish from the lake, pasties, confections and all other things made of sugar, and anything else that has not been expressly mentioned above. It is strictly forbidden to include both meat and fish or any other sea food in the same meal. Oysters may be served only at private meals for twenty persons or less, and not at larger banquets or feasts; collations must be provided in the rooms, on the tables, and not otherwise, and they must consist of modest confections, of the ordinary products of pastry cooks, and of simple fruits of any kind, according to the time of year. No other kind of confection or seasoning may be served, upon a penalty of 10 ducats for anything provided in contravention of the present regulations at gatherings of twenty-five persons or less, and a penalty of 25 ducats for any prohibited dish served at gatherings of more than twenty-five persons.
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23 REGULATION OF THE WEARING OF PEARLS, 1562 From a Senate decree of 15 October 1562 (Bistort 1912, pp. 403-5). We must ensure that the number of pearls in this city does not increase, but rather diminishes as painlessly as possible, and so Be it resolved that all who have pearls and wish to make use of them in Venice shall be obliged within the next eight days to go to the Provveditori sopra le Pompe, and declare the number, weight and quality of those pearls. They shall have them registered in their name, and within the next twenty days after that they must have them sealed with the seal which the Sopraprovveditori and Provveditori shall approve and which shall be kept in the office, so that if from time to time the strings should get broken they can be resealed with the same seal after first making sure that they are [registered] in the same name, and are of the same number and weight. Once this period of twenty-eight days has passed, no more pearls may be registered or sealed. When these pearls have been registered and sealed, they may be transferred from one name to another, as is done at the Dieci Savi [sopra le Decime]. If anyone commits a fraud in the matter of these pearls, he shall be deprived of the privilege of using them in future, as well as suffer the penalty stated below and whatever punishment he may deserve in accordance with the gravity of the fraud. These pearls, duly registered and sealed, may be worn round the neck on a tight string only by the wives of those in whose names they are registered, for a period of ten years and no more, which shall be reckoned from the day of their marriage.
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24 LIVING WELL: SUPPER AND CONVERSATION IN TITIAN’S HOUSE From Priscianese 1540. Extract from appended letter following the sixth book. To the Very Reverend Missier Ludovico Becci and his [friend,] Missier Luigi del Riccio On 1 August I was invited to celebrate the kind of Bacchanal which, I know not why, is called ferrare agosto, so that for most of the evening I argued about it in a delightful garden belonging to Missier Titiano Vecellio, the excellent Venetian painter (as everyone knows), a person truly suited to spice every worthy feast with his pleasantries. There were gathered together with the said Missier Titiano (because birds of a feather flock together) some of the most rare intellects that are found today in this city, and from our set principally Missier Pietro Aretino, the new miracle of nature, and beside him Missier Jacopo Tatti who is as great an imitator of nature with his chisel as is our host with his brush and there was Missier Jacomo Nardi and myself, so that I was the fourth amongst so much wisdom.* Here, before the tables were set out, because the sun despite the shade was still making his heat much felt, we spent the time looking at the lifelike figures in the excellent pictures which fill the house and in discussing the real beauty and charm of the garden, which everyone marvelled at with singular pleasure. The house is situated on the far end of Venice by the edge of the sea, and from it one sees the pretty little island of Murano and other lovely places. As soon as the sun set, this part of the sea teemed with gondolas adorned with beautiful women and resounded with the varied harmony of voice and musical instruments which accompanied our delightful supper until midnight. But, to return to the garden, it was so well laid out and so beautiful and as a result was so much praised that it called to my mind the most pleasant gardens [Horti] at Sant’Agata [in Rome] belonging to our revered patron Monsignor Ridolfi. * On Titian, Aretino and Jacopo Tatti [Sansovino] see below, X.i and preceding headnote. Giacomo Nardi (1476-1563) was a Florentine republican who after 1530 lived in exile, mainly in Venice, where he wrote his Florentine history. Priscianese himself was another Florentine exile a cleric and a grammar-teacher born at Pieve di Presciano, near Arezzo. 100
25. LIVING POORLY: THE SQUALID LODGINGS OF ANTON FRANCESCO DONI, 1550 From a letter, possibly fictitious, to Girolamo Fava, New Year’s Day (i.e. i March) 1550: Soni 1550, pp. 86-8. Let us now talk about my home comforts. … There are four people lodging here: i.e. Prester John, who is in the back room, a superabundant man, of many skills. With his hand he plays the lute, with his foot the harp, with his mouth the flute and with slop-pail the bagpipes. I deeply regret that I cannot at one go describe for you all the details of his room, because the jewels that he keeps there cause him to keep it locked. Apart from him, we consist - from head to tail - of myself, my uncle in the middle, and my pseudo-wife. Then I have other rabble, such as footmen, household servants, stepmothers and others whom I hold in small account. We have one bed between the lot of us, and each has his own (O beautiful secret!) chamberpot, because the privies are common to all. So I make this distinction in order that you properly understand my comfort. To express in a word my state of ease, at one and the same time I can be writing, at table, in bed, or sitting in front of the fire, not to mention in the shit-house. Then I am in every country [at once] and see all mankind if I stand at the window; it looks out onto a place where I can behold Slavs, Greeks, Turks, Moors, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Germans and Italians: different faces, a variety of clothing and weird ways of behaving. Then, if I cast my eyes around the room, I have there the Emperor with the King of France portrayed from life, Michelangelo Buonarotti, Bembo and (not to prolong the list) the portraits from life of my friends and enemies [he lists other items presumably prints: mythological stories, views of towns, antiquities, etc.]. … Whoever reads this letter would think I was the most well-off man in the world, and that such a place costs me some tens of florins a month. ... I came to Venice in those days to practise printing, and to be quit of various lodgings I have had which are unworthy to expose beside this place where I am now. I have the most wretched room (if you can call it that) in the whole town, and the worst company, and I suffer the worst discomfort in the world. For the consolation of sleep, I have 101
a solid mattress, a good, soundly made hard bed, an empty pillow, coarse sheets and a blue counterpane of the type used in hospitals; at night, in the manner of a cruel doctor, an army of huge bedbugs, as large as Mocenigos,* and a mob of fat fleas, test my pulse and bleed me; above my head, in an old loft, I think there is a college of mice and a consistory of cobwebs; below, there is a street where all night long wretches who waste the daytime pass up and down singing strambotti [lewd songs] noisily and certain erotic little madrigals; not to mention Prester John I told you about, who is next door to me, separated by a board partition. Afflicted by a canker, he energetically struggles, hour after hour, with pills, plasters, embrocations, cupping-glasses, sticky plasters, cauteries, adhesives, wads and enemas; he shouts at the top of his voice and shits with great difficulty. His tabernacle being locked up all day, I swear to God that no corrupted grave gives off such a stench when it is opened. On the other side of me I have an old woman and a tailor who, what with the noise of the scissors and the coughing of the toothless crone, pass away two thirds of the night for me with pleasures of the most wretched sort to be found in all the world. No sooner is it daybreak than the boats, barges and gondolas appear in a stinking, fetid, vile canal, with people shouting and braying with coarse and disjointed voices, competing with each other, one with Brenta water, another onions and fresh garlic and mouldy melons, rotten grapes, stale fish and green kindling wood, enough to drive crazy everyone of sound mind. * Silver coin of the time of Doge Giovanni Mocenigo (1478-85).
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Michelle O’Malley & Evelyn Welch The Material Renaissance: Introduction In the early 1990s, the economic historian Richard Goldthwaite put forward a groundbreaking argument for a consumer-led Renaissance in Italy. He suggested, controversially, that the cultural vitality of the Renaissance was created by a new and sustained consumer demand for expensive housing, objects of religious devotion and luxury goods, a demand that was made possible by a high level of widely distributed wealth that was unseen in Northern Europe.1 At the heart of his analysis was a complex discussion of the supply of bullion (high in Italy, low elsewhere), the acceptance of the display of wealth (present in Italy at an early stage) and the notion that demand could generate new fashions and products. Even the concept of novelty itself, he argued, was the fruit of competitive civic and religious demands for representation before God and one's fellow citizens. Goldthwaite was responding to two debates. The first was a long-running exchange about the connections between artistic production and the economy of Renaissance Italy. This began in 1952 when Roberto Lopez argued that from a high point in the fourteenth century, the Italian economy went into a strong decline and remained in 'depression' throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, precisely the period in which its most famous paintings, sculptures and buildings were produced.2 Lopez traced a causal effect between these two factors, arguing that merchants, unable to gain high returns from speculative investments in trade, turned instead to 'investment in culture'. In other words, economic 'hard times' produced the Renaissance as we understand it today. Goldthwaite, however, convincingly argued that the force of the Italian economy did not decline. Despite the closure of foreign markets, cited by Lopez, service operations abroad continued to develop, new internal markets replaced lost foreign ones and, most importantly, Italian producers developed both goods that emulated those previously imported and new types of objects to serve a population that had 103
shrunk following the Black Death. Instead of decline, the period demonstrated buoyant early capitalism, which directly influenced the demand for works of art. The second debate into which Goldthwaite's arguments fed came in publications concerning consumption that were produced in the 1980s by specialists in eighteenth-century studies. Encouraged by the burgeoning scholarship on nineteenth- and twentieth-century consumer practice, writers such as John Brewer and Neil McKendrick sought to uncover its origins in the previous century, above all in Britain.3 Eighteenth-century literacy, leisure and overseas trade were interpreted as encouraging the development of new shopping interests and opportunities, located in spaces such as arcades and coffee houses; Enlightenment culture was redefined as consumer culture. Goldthwaite, however, located the onset of such a culture earlier, in the demand for works of art generated in the fifteenth century, especially in Florence.4 In demonstrating that the works produced by Renaissance painters, sculptors and goldsmiths were as much products of urban economic systems as they were of individual artistic practice, Goldthwaite made a crucial intervention in studies of consumption. He also created an approach to considering Renaissance works of art that has since been taken up by numerous scholars who are now attempting to map the early modern artistic marketplace.5 Despite such interests in the workings of the market, however, Goldthwaite's thesis has not been fully tested. In particular, we still know remarkably little about the meaning of demand and the everyday context for the exchange of objects in the lives of individuals in the Renaissance. Nor do we have much sense of the relationship between the creation and purchase of works of art, which were the focus of Goldthwaite's examination, and the production, buying and selling of other types of goods in the Renaissance, despite the fact that questions concerning the generative ability of wealth concern a wide variety of consumables. This book takes up such issues of the economic and social interests of material culture. Considering food, clothing and everyday furnishings, as well as books, goldsmiths' work, altarpieces and other luxury goods created in Italy from the mid- fifteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century, it employs close analysis of contemporary archival material to explore pricing, to investigate production from the point of 104
view of demand, and to look at networks of exchange that relied not only on money but also on credit, payment in kind and gift giving. The Material Renaissance analyses a wide range of economic transactions to argue that social relationships, rather than objective price factors, were central to every aspect of Renaissance market activity, for quotidian as well as for luxury goods. Anthropologists, for whom the analysis of goods in the context of a wider economic system has long been routine, may see little that is surprising in this comment. Indeed, the distinguished anthropologist Mary Douglas, who collaborated with economic historians towards the end of her career, insisted on the integration of social practices with economic precepts for the study of goods and social life. In her attempt to construct an 'anthropology of consumption' in 1979, she argued that 'consumption decisions become the vital source of the culture of the moment... Consumption is the very arena in which culture is fought over and licked into shape.'6 However, the idea that social relationships are central to economic issues is a more startling concept. It is the project's focus on the particularity of exchange that has made this clear. Traditional studies of prices and value suppress particularity, minimizing the distinctiveness of each exchange.7 That is, in constructing price series, economic historians reduce the number of variables so that comparisons can be made, for example, of costs and standards of living in different periods or places.8 In contrast, the scholars writing here examined individual transactions, looking at how people went about selling or acquiring discrete objects at particular times and in specific places. Nonetheless, we had initially assumed that there would be a notional price for a single object or category of objects, whether this was wine, grain, eggs, linen, altarpieces or manuscripts. We had expected tofind classic concepts of pricing at work, in which negotiations circled around this notional price, set largely by the constituent costs of producing an object and supply and demand. In this model, variations would be due to clearly definable factors such as disparities in the materials, in quality or time invested in manufacture, in demand, or in either the moment or the place of production and distribution. For foodstuffs, for example, we expected price to be influenced by such variables as overall supply (affected by weather and other conditions), transport costs and 105
quality; for works of art by a single painter, we believed that price would closely reflect the cost of the materials and labour as well as the size or number of figures involved. In each case, we posited, there would be tangible, objective reasons for variations in price. But this hypothesis was not borne out by the evidence that emerged. Instead, the project encountered a far wider variety of prices for the same goods than we had expected, even in an individual set of records. Instead of a single price for goods of the same quality and quantity sold at one time and in one place, it became clear that a variety of prices might be proposed and paid. We found that this shifting value was often primarily based on the social needs and interests of the people involved father than on the properties of the object in question. This meant that differences in the amounts that were charged were as strongly related to human relationships as they were to objective financial considerations. This close bond between pricing and the social context of exchange calls into question the very nature of prices in the Renaissance, and potentially undermines the point of comparing, in the short term, prices that are not contextualized, even those for basic comestibles such as grain. Accordingly, none of the chapters has considered a simple equation between object and price over time. Instead, we have sought to articulate a more complex expression concerning objects, value and the individuals and institutions involved in transactions. In its attention to this triangle of elements, the book grapples with one of the fundamental foci of economics: demand. Supply has traditionally attracted more consideration than demand, arguably because it is easier to measure and assess. Given the appropriate archival resources, it is possible to document, for example, the output of a field under normal conditions, the hours a bricklayer contributed to a construction site, the number of volumes printed annually by a single publisher or the number of painted chests that a Florentine artist such as Apollonio di Giovanni produced in a given year.9 Evaluating the demand for such goods is far more elusive. Goldthwaite approached the problem through a study of the wide economic interests and systems of the period. In contrast, this book studies the circumstances of the development and production of particular goods and traces circulation and ownership. It considers a number of different strands 106
through which demand was expressed. These include contracts, court supply records, the purchase of second-hand objects and the interaction of buyers and makers in the manufacture of a variety of goods, both luxury items and articles of everyday use. A number of chapters demonstrate that the desire for 'things' put pressure not only on the development of new goods, but also on the re-making of used objects. Demand also influenced the formulation of new ways of manufacturing items long established on the market, such as manuscripts, textiles, ceramics and suits of clothing. Many of the findings of the book arose from research that looked at trading and acquisition practices that are not normally juxtaposed, or from research that considered one class of objects in the light of topics commonly associated with other goods. It became clear, for example, that there was a deep cultural familiarity with the process of commissioning across a wide range of goods and services. Although commissioning has been studied extensively as an aspect of patronage for works of art, the behaviours and conditions related to commissioning were similar for a much wider variety of goods and services than is usually assumed. For example, carlolai (stationers) commissioned artists and craftsmen to produce individual elements of manuscripts, which they then collated into finished books. City-states or religious institutions contracted with individual craftsmen to provide jobs and produce goods for their respective communities. In addition, court purveyors commonly signed contracts with butchers and fishmongers to provide annual supplies of meat and fish. Such familiarity with the process of ordering objects and services informed the way in which rarer commissions were negotiated for altarpieces, goldsmiths' work and other fine objects. It also heightened awareness in both buyers and sellers of the possibilities and limits of contractual obligations. Buying or commissioning objects and services also put powerful cultural beliefs about spending into action. In particular, it is clear that concepts about magnificent behaviour not only informed purchase and gift choices at the highest level in courts and republics, but also influenced gift giving, were a factor in pricing works of art made for decidedly non-aristocratic buyers and put pressure on governing bodies to attract the inventors and producers of innovative goods to 107
their respective cities and towns, whether the manufacture of these objects was cost-effective or not. Another major theme of this book is the fluidity of social relationships and the permeability of social levels in regard to acquisition, expenditure and payment arrangements. Indeed, the very ways in which people acquired objects ensured that individuals became entangled in social relationships. In this context, it is worth underlining the fact that an inability to pay in cash provided little if any restriction to ownership. The use of credit was pervasive at all levels of society; it increased the purchasing power of individuals and was a central contribution to the dynamism of exchange. In addition, payment in kind was common. Both methods drew people into associations that could be complicated and long-lasting. Tipping and alms-giving offered wide possibilities for the acquisition of objects by the poor, and these also drew people into long-lasting associations. In tracing how people obtained specific objects, the book underlines the fact that earning power and the possibilities of acquisition were often unconnected in this period. These interests in pricing, producing and acquiring have determined the structure of the text. Part I opens by addressing the discourse of expenditure: what were the terms and tropes that could be used to describe, praise or impugn purchasing practices? Patricia Allerston investigates the very term 'consumption' and its contemporary uses in Renaissance Venice, looking at the associations, both positive and negative, that objects and their acquisition carried in the period. In the next chapter, Rupert Shepherd demonstrates how the concept of magnificent spending had a rhetorical character of its own, one that varied according to the specific political context of a republic or a court. These chapters provide the backdrop for discussions of the contested issue of value and how it could be encoded in price. Accordingly, in chapter 3, Evelyn Welch looks at the practical issues involved in pricing by analysing legislation, statutes and account books, and the sermons and negotiation techniques that suggest how people understood what they were to pay for goods. Guido Guerzoni's chapter on securing foodstuffs for the Ferrarese court calls into question the techniques of classical economic analysis for understanding Renaissance pricing practices, arguing for the importance of social position and relationships over the traditional focus on supply 108
and demand. Guerzoni looks at grain and fish; Michelle O'Malley, in continuing the theme of pricing, looks at altarpieces, demonstrating a similar contingency and variability in the factors that determined prices for works of art. In Part II, attention shifts from pricing to the development of new goods and techniques. While prices are not inconsequential to these chapters, the principal focus is on innovation, manufacturing processes and the ways in which professional groups responded to the demand for new or fashionable goods. Luca Mola begins by examining the transfer of innovative manufacturing processes among Italian city-states and highlights both the ingenuity of individual producers and the resourcefulness of communes in actively increasing their economic power and social prestige. The chapters that follow investigate innovation in individual professions. Elizabeth Currie analyses how tailors shifted their professional status during the sixteenth century from suppliers of a service to developers of fashion. Valerie Taylor looks at Giulio Romano's development of innovative designs for objects intended to establish a distinctive visual identity for the Mantuan court, and in the process, assesses how innovation practised in the service of a particular individual might have a negative impact on longterm local production practices. Taylor's findings are particularly instructive when set against Guerzoni's discussion of the care taken by the Ferrarese court to influence civic economic life. In the last chapter in this part, Anna Melograni demonstrates the fundamental changes in the practice of creating manuscripts that occurred over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as books were increasingly produced in urban environments. She traces, for the first time, the constituent costs of making illuminated manuscripts in the Renaissance. In investigating various means of acquisition and exchange, Part III highlights ways in which social and political networks were embedded within economic systems. These essays focus on friendship and clientage, as well as on debt, credit and gift giving across social boundaries. In chapter 10, Ann Matchette discusses the very broad range of clients served by Domenico del Commandatore, a second-hand dealer. In analysing the wide variety of means that people used to pay for the goods he purveyed, she demonstrates how groups that are normally assumed to have been excluded from such opportunities were able to acquire 109
luxury objects. Paula Hohti continues this investigation by discussing the multiplicity of means by which artisans and shopkeepers of limited means could acquire surprisingly valuable goods, centring her analysis on the colourful figure of the Sienese innkeeper Marchione di Paolo da Mulazzo. The final chapter shifts attention to the Italian elite. While far wealthier and more powerful than the second-hand dealer and innkeeper discussed in the previous two chapters, figures such as cardinals and princes were equally embedded in webs of social obligations. To demonstrate this, Mary Hollingsworth traces the wide impact that tips, alms and gifts had in the world of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este. The discussion of economic issues in these chapters involves reference to the many currencies that were used for making purchases in Italy in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The variety of coins minted in Italian cities and towns and their changing value and meaning in the period are discussed in the Note preceeding this Introduction. As these subjects suggest, this volume brings complementary areas of scholarship to bear on questions concerning the cost, production and acquisition of objects, issues of central concern to historians of material culture. The book underlines with particular examples the pervasive demand for objects that Goldthwaite traced in the period. In addition, it demonstrates the opportunity enjoyed by people at most levels of society to possess a wide variety of goods. In doing so, the volume does not address the question of the depth of wealth in Renaissance society, a central tenet of Goldthwaite's thesis. Instead, it highlights the widespread potential for ownership, even when incomes were limited or coin scarce. As regards art, the social forces that influenced the acquisition of new works were bound up with those that encouraged the obtaining of other luxury goods. The practices of pricing art were no different from those employed for setting the prices of other types of objects, both ordinary and exotic. By addressing the detail of exchange, The Material Renaissance makes visible the multiple, often contradictory nature of Italian Renaissance culture and offers a more nuanced perspective on Renaissance economic interactions.
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Notes 1 Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600, Baltimore, 1993. See also Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism, New York, 1983, for an early study of an aspect of the Renaissance market, and Lisa Jardine, Wordly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance, London, 1996. Critiques of the consumerist approach to the Renaissance are discussed in Allerston's essay below (chapter 1). 2 Roberto Lopez, 'Hard Times and Investment in Culture', The Renaissance: A Symposium, New York, 1952, pp. 19-34. For a discussion of the Renaissance depression/prosperity debate, see Judith C. Brown, 'Prosperity or Hard Times in Renaissance Italy?', RQ , 42 (1989), pp. 761-80; Anthony Molho, 'Fisco ed economico a Firenze alia vigilia del concilio', ASI, 148 (1990), pp. 811-19 and 835-6, and Gene A. Brucker, The Economic Foundations of Laurentian Florence', in Gian Carlo Garfagnini, ed., Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo, Florence, 1994, pp. 3 -5. Susan Mosher Stuard has reinforced the suggestion of a period of prosperity in fourteenth-century Tuscany in Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-century Italy, Philadelphia, 2006, pp. 227-8. 3 Key studies in include the essays in John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds, Consumption and the World of Goods, London, 1993; Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and John H. Plumb, eds, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth- Century England, London, 1982. For a critique see Craig Clunas, 'Modernity, Global and Local: Consumption and the Rise of the West', American Historical Review, 104 (1999), pp. 1497-511, and Margot Finn, 'Sex and the City: Metropolitan Modernities in English History', Victorian Studies, 44 (2001), pp. 25-32. There is a very large literature on contemporary consumption. See the overview in Frank Trentmann, 'Beyond Consumerism: New Historical Perspectives on Consumption', Journal of Contemporary History, 39 (2004), pp. 373-401. 4 See Allerston's essay (chapter 1) for a discussion of the challenges to Goldthwaite's ideas. 5 On the Italian Renaissance art market see Michael North and David Ormrod, Art Markets in Europe, Aldershot, 1998; Gabriel Neher and Rupert Shepherd, eds, Revaluing Renaissance Art, Aldershot, 2000; Marcellofantoni, Louisa C. Matthew and Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, eds, The Art Market in Italy, 15th-17th Centuries/ll mercato dell'arle in Italia, secc. XV-XVII, Modena, 2003, particularly Goldthwaite's own concluding essay. 6 Maty Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption, London, 1996, p. 37. Douglas's argument has been extended more recently by other anthropologists, notably Daniel Miller, who has looked at contemporary emotive and communal issues involved in the acquisition of material culture. See Daniel Miller, ed., Acknowledging Consumption: A Review o New Studies, London, 1995, and Daniel Miller, ed., Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter, London, 1998. 7 E. J. Hamilton, 'Use and Misuse of Price History', Journal of Economic History, 4 (1944), pp. 47-60. 8 Examples of price series can be found in Ernest Henry Phelps-Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins, 'Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables, Compared with Builders' Wage-Rates', Economica, 23 (1956), pp. 296-314, and A Perspective of Wages and Prices, London, 1981; for Italy see Jenny Griziotti-Kretschmann, II problema del trend secolare nelle fluttuazioni dei prezzi, Pavia, 1935; T. Damsholt, 'Some Observations on Four Series of Tuscan Corn Prices 1520-1630', Scandinavian Economic History Review, 12 (1964), pp. 145-64; G. Vigo, 'Real Wages of the Working Class in Italy: Building Workers' Wages (14th-18th Century)', JEEH, 3 (1974), pp. 378-99; and Charles de la Ronciere, Prix et salaires a Florence au XlVe siecle (1280-1380), Rome, 1982. 9 For a discussion of the painter Neri di Bicci's output, see Annabel Thomas, The Painter’s Practice in Renaissance Tuscany, Cambridge, 1995, and Ellen Callman, Apollonio di Giovanni, Oxford, 1974, for discussion of the work of the specialist in cas- sone and deschi da parto. Some analysis can also be made of printing production; see Melissa Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli (1476-1484): Commentary and Transcription, Florence, 1999.
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READING 3
Patricia Allerston Consuming Problems: Worldly Goods in Renaissance Venice The onset of consumerism has proved to be a compelling theme in historical studies of consumption because consumerism – typically equated with a compelling desire to amass non-essential material goods – is generally understood to be a defining characteristic of modern Western society.1 By investigating this so-called 'revolution' in consumer behaviour, historians have highlighted the transition from a traditional society to a modern one. While much of their discussion has centred on the eighteenth century, such consumerism has also been identified as the driving force of Renaissance cultural development. Indeed, Randolph Stam has noted that 'By some recent accounts, Renaissance culture was the product of what amounted to an extended shopping spree.'2 Although dating the development of such consumerism presents an interesting historical problem, we should be wary of imposing the concept too readily upon the distant past.3 The Renaissance is well known for being a notoriously problematical historical phenomenon. Given that it is no longer taken for granted that it represents the beginning of modernity, we cannot presuppose that consumerism, as defined above, was likely to have been one of its intrinsic features.4 Attitudes towards consumption in both the past and the present are particularly hard to encapsulate for they incorporate a variety of contradictory elements, differ from individual to individual, and are constantly evolving. Whereas careful adaptation of the methods used in other academic disciplines can help us to approach this elusive subject, significant problems face those who seek to understand consumption in the remote past.5 Not only are such analyses ultimately dependent upon the existence of appropriate evidence, but we also encounter systems of belief and structural realities quite different from our own.6 However, although unequivocal evidence relating to consumer behaviour in Renaissance Italy is extremely uneven, there is great value in attempting to locate 112
consumption within this specific historical context. Such an exercise reveals that the notion of consumerism, in the sense in which it has usually been deployed by historians, may not be entirely appropriate. This first chapter highlights the existence of various sets of ideas linked to the acquisition and use of material goods in the Italian peninsula, and relates some of those to the city of Venice and its inhabitants during a period of economic and demographic expansion (C.1450-C.1650). During this period, which has also been called the 'long' or 'extended' sixteenth century, Venice was crammed with both people and things.7 Best known as a focus of international trade and manufacturing, it was the capital of an extensive state incorporating diverse territories and cities, many of which had developed economies of their own.8 At the time the city of Venice was an emporium in every sense of the word since it was still a major retailing centre as well as a hub of wholesale trade, and numerous sources demonstrate its potential as a site for major ‘shopping sprees’.9 The letters written By Albrecht Durer to Willibald Pirckheimer during his second visit to the metropolis in 1506, for instance, reveal the kaleidoscopic range of objects which his patron expected Durer to find for him: pearls and gemstones, rugs, history paintings, enamels, paper, cranes' and swans' feathers, as well as newly published Greek texts.10 While in Venice, Durer also procured a set of clothes and a length of woollen cloth for himself.11 A remarkably wide range of Venetian inhabitants were able to acquire similar goods during the 'long' sixteenth century, although like Durer they too were often strapped for cash. This is because items such as clothes, household furnishings, books, jewellery and various other types of precious objects circulated by many means, not simply through the exchange of cash for new manufactures. They could be purchased over or under the shop counter, old and new, or be obtained in lieu of payment, by default as well as design. They might also be bought at public auctions. Moveable goods could also be rented, borrowed, received as gifts or stolen.12 Durer was certainly not unusual in being paid three rings for three small paintings while in Venice. This was a normal trading practice in that city as elsewhere, and it suggests that the ways in which Venetians of the time acquired and deployed moveable goods were often very different from our own.13 This is not to exclude them from consideration as 113
consumers as we understand the term today, but rather to suggest that we need to consider very carefully what their consumption may have meant to them.14 Although we are beginning to appreciate that consumer behaviour in the Italian peninsula during the period C.1450-C.1650 was shaped by ideas as well as by material considerations, the co-existence of diverse bodies of thought about the acquisition and use of goods at that time has still received insufficient attention.15 The complicated ideological background against which consumption took place in the period needs to be investigated before we can discuss the relationship which contemporaries had with the material world around them.16 This Chapter, therefore, highlights three inter-related sets of ideas which were current during the period in question relating to the acquisition and use of goods. These can be loosely categorized as intellectual, religious and socio-political. Unlike Goldthwaite or Starn, this chapter dwells on the negative views of the activities since they have been surprisingly neglected in existing historical analyses of consumption in the Italian peninsula.17 It also draws attention to ambiguities within those bodies of thought. Each of these issues represents a substantial historical topic in its own right and commands an extensive specialist literature; the discussion which follows is therefore necessarily schematic. While some of the ideas which formed the background to consumption during the 'long' sixteenth century may appear familiar to modern observers, others are more historically specific. Certain types of decorative artefacts, for example, are thought to have appealed to the upper echelons of Italian Renaissance society because they offered a useful means of relaying edifying concepts from classical antiquity, providing a moral and intellectual engagement with the ancient past typical of Italian Renaissance culture as it has been traditionally defined.18 The banquet plate designs of Giulio Romano examined by Valerie Taylor in chapter 8 strikingly embody this trend. While its effect on consumer behaviour among the social elite has only become the subject of detailed study, this phenomenon has already been labelled 'Renaissance chic' by a well-known historian.19 An association with classical thought can be seen as benefiting such privileged groups of consumers in particular ways. For example, displaying a glass goblet which bore the words 'Love requires faith', in about 1500, might have served to highlight the discerning nature 114
of its Venetian owners. Its aphorism, believed to be an ancient saying, communicated intellectual credibility and an awareness of the importance of moral improvement, and the goblet itself also revealed an appreciation of ancient technology (Figure 2).20 The ancient sources and concepts which were rediscovered during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were an eclectic assemblage and had the potential to affect contemporary thinking in a variety of ways.21 In short, as well as taking educated Italians closer to goods, the study of such ideas could also place conceptual obstacles in the path of the same consumers.22 For example, the arcane corpus of Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas, as reinterpreted in various parts of the Italian peninsula by fifteenth-century scholars such as Pier Candido Decembrio, Cardinal Bessarion and Marsilio Ficino, was as much a part of the 'broad church' that was Renaissance intellectual culture as were those of Cicero and Aristotle.23 And if an awareness of Neo-Platonic notions of beauty can be seen as fostering a taste for decorative objects such as mirrors, then it is also conceivable that knowledge of the Platonic ideal of communal ownership of property, not to mention of Platonic concerns about luxury, could have produced a more ambivalent effect.24 The Platonic ideal of communal ownership prompted intense debate among fifteenthcentury intellectuals and also proved to be influential among the sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century thinkers who, like Plato himself, envisioned perfect societies founded on such ideals. In the utopian city created by the literary adventurer Anton Francesco Doni while living in Venice in 1553, for instance: 'Everything was in common, and the peasants dressed like those in the city, because everyone carried away the reward of his labor and took what he needed.'25 The inclusion of the ideal of communal ownership, in a populist publication of this kind, suggests that this notion was expected to strike a chord with a broad lay readership.26 Indeed, it fits in both with a strand of sociopolitical criticism and with a strand of radical religious egalitarianism, which were articulated by certain groups of Venetian inhabitants in the early to mid-sixteenth century.27 Distancing oneself from material concerns was also an important tenet within the eclectic body of Stoic ideas, one of a number of other ancient schools
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of thought which, like Platonism, continued to influence intellectuals throughout the 'long' sixteenth century.28 Although it does not provide all the answers, sensitivity to the co-existence of ambivalent ideas about the acquisition and ownership of goods within Renaissance intellectual circles can help us to understand why educated consumers might have striven to appear disinterested in extravagant displays of their material wealth. 29 While Renaissance Venice has not traditionally been seen as a centre in which ancient thought was generally appreciated, this impression is steadily being revised.30 Knowledge of the Venetians' familiarity with classical and classicizing artefacts sheds a very different light on this subject, suggesting that they might have preferred to engage with antique ideas through tangible objects rather than with written texts.31 Their consumption patterns, as evidenced by the collection of antiquities associated with Venetian patricians such as the Grimani family and Gabriel Vendramin, reflect this.32 However, the acquisition of copies of antiquities and of new artefacts made in classical styles - such as those owned by the non-patrician collector Andrea Odoni - was probably more common within the higher strata of Venetian society.33 Such all'antica objects were produced and traded in Venice throughout much of the 'extended' sixteenth century, and the inscribed glass goblet mentioned above, which depicts a well-to-do Venetian couple as well as bearing the classicizing motto about love, is a pertinent example (Figure 2).34 Just as Virgil's poetry apparently appealed beyond the social and intellectual elite of Venice, so too, it would seem, did the demand for what Isabella PalumboFossati has called 'concrete and visible evidence of the mythical classical world'.35 At least, that is the impression given in the latter part of the period, when portraits of ancient emperors were recorded on the walls of the house of a painter of miniatures, when a marbled wooden chest and a painting (of the Madonna) with gilded columns 'in the antique style', furnished the home of a lead founder, and when the goods sold at a debtors' auction included books on architecture by Palladio and Alberti belonging to a carpenter and a small all'antica turquoise set in gold owned by a smith.36 This impression contradicts the image given by the Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni in his mid-eighteenth-century comedy La 116
famiglia dell'antiquario. In this play, an appreciation of the antique is presented as the preserve of the nobility; moreover, the incomprehensibility of this expensive pastime (to a Venetian merchant as well as a nobleman's household servant) is central to the plot.37 Yet in sixteenth-century Venice, skilled artisans such as lead founders, carpenters and smiths made the many different types of 'chic' classicizing objects sold in the city, and in so doing they would have had to engage, at least to a certain degree, with the abstract concepts that these products were supposed to express.38 Such familiarity with classically informed artefacts has indeed been seen as providing craftsmen with an opportunity to boost their status in the 'extended' sixteenth century.39 This interpretation is supported by numerous examples: for instance, by the well- documented Venetian-based wood engraver Andrea Fosco, who not only owned such objects, but also was depicted on a portrait medal handling a piece of ancient sculpture.40 The variety of meanings which classicizing artefacts could embody in this period, however, supports the idea that, like their social superiors, such artisans might have had a more complicated relationship with 'Renaissance chic' than this rather reductive term suggests.41 A rare insight into the range of associations which such antiquarian objects might have had for a Venetian artisan is, for example, elucidated by the will drawn up by Lorenzo Lotto while he was in his native city in 1546.42 In this document, which he wrote himself, Lotto described an antique engraved cornelian set in a gold ring which was one of a number of intaglio gems in his possession. Like the blacksmith owner of the all'antica turquoise mentioned above, Lotto used gems to manage his debts. He also used them to seal his letters to influential patrons.43 He explained that the cornelian's motif (of a crane taking off with a yoke at its feet and the sign of Mercury in its beak) 'represented the active and contemplative lives', and that 'through spiritual meditation' it was possible 'to rise above earthly things'.44 This description demonstrates Lotto's familiarity with the arcane worlds of classical scholarship, as well as his ability to use material objects to evoke those worlds.45 Yet his concern to signal this engagement with the realm of ideas, by means of an engraved gem which he possessed, cannot simply be attributed to a desire to demonstrate his intellectual credentials or social pretensions. Lotto's symbolic gem can be seen as serving 117
another and, in contemporary terms, fundamentally important mnemonic purpose; it was a physical memento of the path to religious salvation.46 In this respect, as Stephen D. Bowd and J. Donald Cullington have noted, the 'contempt for the world and for worldliness in a civic setting did not disappear or diminish during the Renaissance'.47 Material possessions were a key focus of this contemptus mundi, and their problematical associations were also far from forgotten during the 'long' sixteenth century. Indeed, the powerful traditional belief that material objects were part of this world and thus ultimately ephemeral was a constant during the sixteenth century. For the pious this meant that, in imitation of Christ, they were tofocus instead on spiritual eternity.48 The view was shared by the various observant movements, itinerant preachers, religious prophesiers, new religious orders, charismatic figureheads, evangelical artisans and classically educated Christian humanists, who galvanized spiritual life at many levels of society during the devastating era of the Italian Wars (1494-1559).49 Such religious fervour - of which Girolamo Savonarola is only the most famous exponent - is now taken more seriously by historians of the Italian Renaissance, and we are also starting to appreciate that this dynamic force continued to shape opinion among many different social groups.50 Indeed, the desire to renovate society by returning to a simpler form of Christian behaviour, which underpinned these spiritual phenomena, can be seen as part of a long trend in Catholic reform which started well before the Council of Trent (1545-63).51 Viewed within this longer perspective, for example, the convent reforms highlighting the sinful connotations of possessions and of possessiveness towards material goods, which were undertaken by Tridentine reformers in Venice as elsewhere during the late 1500s, do not appear unusual.52 Such religious concerns had provoked similar criticisms, as well as similar institutional responses, on a number of occasions in early sixteenth- century Venice. For example, during the crisis prompted by the League of Cambrai (1508-17) a specific magistracy was formed to regulate ostentatious displays of material effects by the city's inhabitants.53 Concerns about the problems posed by such effects were also central to the pre-Tridentine reform programme which the Venetian patrician Vincenzo Querini, who left his native city during the height of the League of Cambrai crisis for a more spiritual 118
environment, devised for the Church as a whole.54 Knowledge of the persistent appeal of the ideal of religious poverty can also help to explain the zealously devout circle associated with the Venetian religious reformer Girolamo Miani in the late 1520s and the 1530s. This group's close identification with the city's beggars during the subsistence crisis of the late 1520s even extended to the fervent imitation of their threadbare clothing.55 As Lotto's interpretation of his intaglio gem reveals, the high, pagan worlds of classical scholarship could be compatible with this persisting religious contemptus mundi. Indeed, the Christian humanist Desiderius Erasmus, who, like Durer, was in Venice during the turbulent first decade of the sixteenth century, applied the Platonic allegory of the cave to the things of the physical world, describing them as 'mere shadows of reality'.56 It is tempting to suggest, on the basis of an illustrated proverb published in Venice in 1564, that such spiritual concerns were also compatible with less recondite spheres of lay belief in the sixteenth century (Figure 3). The text of this proverb translates as: 'Who disregards the world and its things within it, is given wings to go to the top of the heavens.'57 Knowledge of the continuing importance of such ideas throughout society helps us to understand why, for example, in his will of 1579, a relatively well-off Venetian shopkeeper called Zuane sought to be buried with 'his dear Capuchin fathers', dressed in their humble attire.58 The long-standing symbolic practice of being buried in such 'virtuous' mendicant garb was one of the distinctive features of Venetian Catholic ritual which the English traveller Thomas Coryate chose to recount to his countrymen in the early seventeenth century.59 While overt demonstrations of piety of this nature might no longer have been standard during the 'extended' sixteenth century (and were thus, as Sharon Strocchia has noted, all the more striking as a result), the spiritual ideal which inspired them continued to be upheld.50 For instance, in the well- ordered world of dress which Cesare Vecellio constructed at the end of the 1500s, married Venetian women of 'a certain age' dressed in accordance with their distance 'from the vanities of the world', and gave 'themselves to the spiritual life' (Figure 4).61 In these examples, as with Lotto's cornelian and the worn-out garb affected by the Venetian patrician Girolamo Miani and his circle earlier in the century, material goods paradoxically 119
served the useful religious function of signalling their owners' pious asceticism. While this strategic deployment of material objects sits rather uneasily with the fact that those objects were part of the physical world which devout Christians were meant to spurn, such inconsistencies were an integral part of the complicated ideological background against which consumption took place during the period.52 Within traditional religious thought, the things of the physical world were not problematic simply because they discouraged people from reaching 'forward to the heavenly kingdom'; they could also act upon people and direct them to a much less desirable end - hell.63 As Valerie Taylor demonstrates in her essay on Giulio Romano's silverware designs (chapter 8), the ways in which material artefacts played upon the senses were, like their classical associations, an important part of their attraction. Delightful to feel as well as see, such objects might also make a distinctive sound when touched, or emit a pleasant odour; indeed, scent holders became decorative objects in their own right in the sixteenth century.64 The cloth door-, wall- and bed-hangings, for example, which were intrinsic parts of the decorative ensembles of household furnishings most usually associated with the upper echelons of Venetian society, bore each of these sensory attributes.65 To understand their appeal to contemporaries, we need to appreciate the sounds which these textiles and their trimmings made when moved, and the scents they emitted, together with their colours, textures and weights.66 We would expect such qualities to have been esteemed by contemporaries for, as well as being attractive features in themselves, they were the means by which more abstract values - such as the cost of such items, their place of origin and their association with classical virtues such as splendour - were communicated.67 However, we also need to appreciate that within certain circles sensuous qualities of this nature continued to provoke serious religious concerns. Not only were the senses often linked more with base material concerns than with the higher and more virtuous realms of the spirit, but gratification of those senses was thought to have serious spiritual consequences of its own.68 Indeed, in the 'specially designed' hell of seventeenth-century Jesuit preachers so dramatically evoked by Piero Camporesi, the senses were the means of punishment used to 120
torture the bodies 'which, on earth, they had served, smoothed and caressed'.69 In one fell swoop, a nobleman awaking in this hell might go 'from smelling amber in gloves, liquid amber from Messico [sic] in food, the essence of roses in baths and balsams in oil lamps, to suffering the infected stench of decaying bilges in that enormous sewer'.70 Such indulgence in corporeal pleasures provoked this type of trenchant religious response because it was traditionally equated with the mortal sin of Luxury (Luxuria). As Christopher J. Berry has noted, '"luxury" was a stock ingredient in the moral vocabulary of the "pre-modern" period'.71 The close relationship between the senses and the capital sin of Luxury was also exploited to great dramatic effect in the profane literature of the 'long' sixteenth century, as well as in its art.72 The term 'luxury' continued to have strong sexual connotations in the period, being closely linked to lechery, an association which is largely absent from its modern usage.73 For example, a mercer accused of having lived 'luxuriously' in 1580s Venice was understood to have had carnal relationships with women outside marriage.74 Neutral modern uses of the word 'luxury' to describe the fine products of the period mistakenly negate this moral dimension, for, in contemporary terms, the appeal of such objects was theoretically akin to that of the flesh in that both invoked the senses.75 The close relationship between sumptuous material effects and licentious behaviour is made quite clear in Thomas Coryate's ecstatic account of the apartment and clothes belonging to a Venetian courtesan. By including a detailed description of that courtesan's lavish trappings (which concluded with the grave warning that dressed in her glittering attire '[s]hee wil very neare benumme and captivate thy senses'), Coryate made his account of this otherwise apparently innocent supposed encounter somewhat suggestive.76 While Coryate's discourse can be seen as conforming to contemporary English views of Italy - and especially of Venice - as a place grounded in 'vanity and vice', similar references can also be found in Venetian literature itself.77 For example, in the anonymous sixteenthcentury comedy La Venexiana, a Venetian widow orders her servant to prepare a room in which to receive a young foreign stranger. The deployment of sensual material effects - wall-hangings, a bed canopy and perfume - to decorate the room can be interpreted as an indication of the widow's amorous intentions, as well as a 121
sign of her socio-economic status and of contemporary notions of hospitality.78 The continuing belief that sensuality, thus broadly interpreted, could lead to eternal damnation is graphically illustrated in an early seventeenth-century engraving and its accompanying poem, attributed to the Paduan publishing house of Pietro Paolo Tozzi (Figure 5). Here 'impious and harmful' sensuality, personified as a stylishly dressed woman seated on an elaborately carved chair, gives birth to the seven capital vices. Once nurtured by ignorance and pleasure, these vices are then goaded into the mouth of hell.79 Knowledge of this particular body of ideas can help us to understand the prominent place given to prostitutes in the transformative spiritual reform of the sixteenth century. As in the Paduan engraving, such women were conspicuous reminders of the 'harmful' relationship between sensuality and the vice of Luxury. 80 Like the Gothic sculptures of Luxury carved on capitals of the Ducal Palace in Venice during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the city's prostitutes were also associated with elaborate jewellery, a concern with their appearances, and elaborate clothing which exposed their breasts.81 The sixteenth-century belief that the eradication of these material associations was instrumental to their redemption is demonstrated by an altarpiece commissioned for the Venetian church of the Soccorso, a charitable institution founded expressly for the purpose of reclaiming such women in the late 1500s (Figure 6).82 Painted in the 1590s by Benedetto Caliari, the brother of Paolo Veronese, it depicts the prioress of the Soccorso interceding with the Madonna, via Mary Magdalene, on behalf of three penitent prostitutes.83 While the prioress conforms to the Vecellian ideal of an older woman whose distance from 'the vanities of the world' is indicated by her simple garb, the sumptuously dressed prostitute on the far right signals her sincere intention to reform by removing her expensive jewellery.84 As with Lotto's cornelian and Miani's ragged clothes, while Caliari's altarpiece and the Paduan engraving served the useful purposes of communicating specific ideas about the spiritual problems posed by material concerns, they also incorporated interpretative ambiguities. Whereas the engraving was designed for a fan, and was thus intended to be part of the sensual world of material effects which it admonished, Caliari's painting prompted similar questions about the moral status 122
of decorative artefacts.85 One of the virtuous activities in which the reformed inmates of the Soccorso (depicted on the left of his painting) engage is lacemaking. However, although lace was synonymous with chastity and virtue, being typically used on altar cloths and religious vestments, it also had problematic associations.86 It was not only one of the 'vanities of the world' which the inmates of pious institutions such as the Soccorso were meant to have left behind them, but was also one of the dangerous 'luxurious' effects which were particularly identified with unrepentant Venetian prostitutes in the late sixteenth century and much of the seventeenth century.87 The prosecution of the 'public whore' (pubblica meretrice), Pasquetta, by the Venetian sumptuary magistrates in 1639, for example, was due as much to the black lace which decorated her silk skirt, sleeves, apron, cuffs and veil, as to the gold chain and flowers which, like the penitent prostitute in Caliari’s painting, she wore in her hair.88 Thanks to an increasing number of studies of sumptuary legislation, the sociopolitical ideas which, along with civic concerned about lay piety, underpinned these governmental measures to regulate displays of costly effects are already quite familiar.89 Venetian sumptuary laws have in particular been interpreted from this angle, as a means of maintaining the appearance of social cohesion which was central to Venice's reputation as a well-governed, aristocratic republic.90 This type of analysis is predicated upon the understanding of displays of material wealth encountered about that is to say as a device employed by people for strategic social purposes, rather than simply as an end in itself. Moreover, the dynamic period of economic and demographic expansion with which we are concerned has itself been seen as a propelling agent, encouraging the use of such ostentation to reinforce existing social boundaries as well as to breach them.91 Both types of social strategies were politically dangerous because they undermined the notion of the Venetian Republic as an harmonious state, whose stability was based upon the communally minded attitudes of its citizens (communitas), as well as its model constitution.92 The case of Vincenzo Zuccato, a Venetian wool merchant denounced to the sumptuary magistrates in early 1605, supports this type of analysis.93 Zuccato was accused of holding a grandiose reception on the birth of a child, objections being made both to the number of women thought to have 123
attended and to the sumptuous appearance of the room in which they were supposedly received (the camera del parto).94 According to the late sixteenthcentury Venetian eulogist Francesco Sansovino, such displays of 'splendour and magnificence' were typical of these events; though noting that excessive expenditure was forbidden on these occasions, he particularly extolled the use of gold and silver plate as 'a noble thing and beautiful to onlookers' eyes'.95 Zuccato's camera del parto apparently contained such forbidden 'noble' effects: 'silk figured tapestries which stretched from the floor up to the ceiling', 'engraved and gilded wooden chests worked with bronze' and 'a gilded iron bedstead with a yellow damask canopy and finely worked sheets'.96 The carefully worded declaration in which Zuccato refuted these allegations certainly illuminates his understanding of the socio-political concerns provoked by such display.97 Abasing himself before the 'Very Excellent Lordships' (as contemporary etiquette demanded), he immediately stressed that he had 'never gone beyond the boundaries of modesty, and of his tenuous fortunes, and social status [conditione]'.98 In effect, however, sumptuary legislation seems not to have been an expedient means of socio-political management.99 When summoned to answer to the city's magistrates for her unseemly appearance in public, the prostitute Pasquetta apparently arrived wearing all the forbidden items detailed in her denunciation, plus more: semi-precious stone 'pins', a coral and gold necklace and a coloured undergarment trimmed with gold.100 While such items were prohibited to respectable married women as well as to 'women of her status', Pasquetta is reported as saying ('most licentiously') that she was allowed to wear them. Her prosecution and punishment - six months in a windowless prison and a fine of 150 ducats - appear to prove her wrong, although it was subsequently contested by the French ambassador, who appealed to the Venetian Senate on her behalf, and the final result proved ambiguous.101 The involvement of an aristocratic foreign dignitary in this particular case serves to highlight the existence of contradictory socio-political concerns with which the patrician sumptuary authorities, like their counterparts in other administrative spheres, had to contend.102 This is particularly evident on the occasions when the problematic sumptuous effects belonging to private individuals proved to be indispensable to the Venetian state. 124
When high-ranking foreign dignitaries visited Venice, for example, and were said to be hosted 'at public expense', this was quite literally true, for a substantial amount of the material splendour exhibited on these important political occasions was supplied in kind, directly by the city's inhabitants.103 During the visit of the princes of Savoy in April 1608, for instance, a state banquet was held in the palace belonging to 'the very illustrious Lord Procurator Priuli'.104 Another patrician, Foscari, lent a boat and the Jewish community was similarly involved, supplying costly furnishings for the banqueting venue in accordance with a recent government stipulation.105 Even the brigade of Venetian noblewomen who were invited to the banquet can be seen as contributing to the material environment; like the paintings hired by officials to embellish Priuli's residence, the arrival of 150 sumptuously dressed gentildonne would also have helped 'to furnish the palace for the festa'.106 Paradoxically, such public displays of privately owned finery can be seen, like sumptuary laws, as a mechanism for maintaining the appearance of social cohesion which was central to the idea of Venice as an harmonious republic. Indeed, the use of citizens' valuable possessions for public purposes was an extremely effective way of showcasing the republican ideal of communitas to representatives of princely states.107 The costs of organizing such elaborate public events were another consistent concern and they also seem to have risen significantly, especially towards the end of the period.108 As well as serving a useful rhetorical function, therefore, official deployment of borrowed finery can be seen as a convenient alternative to defraying these essential government expenses.109 In spite of these advantages, it is hard to reconcile the Venetian state's deployment of its citizens' private property in this way with the efforts which it made to limit the private display of such goods.110 Such public use of privately owned property not only undermined the government's own sumptuary legislation, but it also exacerbated the socio-political problems which that body of laws was apparently meant to address. This is because the deployment of Venetians' splendid effects at high-profile public events can be seen to have benefited their owners as well as the state.111 The use of private palaces for major state festivities, for example, inevitably associated those festivities with the families to which the palaces 125
belonged.112 In this respect, the deployment of Ca' Foscari for the state visit of the French king, Henry III, in 1574 (which was a milestone in sixteenth-century Venetian public ceremonial) can be seen in the same light as the use of the new Medici palace to accommodate Galeazzo Maria Sforza in Florence in 1459.113 Moreover, the ubiquitous use of coats of arms and familial devices on household objects of every sort would also have left no onlooker in doubt that the property deployed 'at the public expense' belonged to quite specific people rather than the state.114 Although the public festivities at which such goods were displayed are often termed 'ephemeral', they left a tangible legacy in manuscript and print.115 Describing a theatrical event attended by various procurators and other public figures in January 1530, for example, the famous Venetian diarist Marino Sanudo mentioned the two suppliers of the 'very beautiful' crimson (and thus very expensive) wall- hangings by name.116 The multi-dimensional nature of such public events is exemplified by a festive banquet held to honour the Prince of Salerno (Pietro Antonio di Santo Severino) one evening in January 1521.117 It was hosted by the patrician company of Ortolani, one of a number of youth associations which, as Edward Muir has noted, organized such festivities 'for their own entertainment and for the glory of the republic'.118 The banquet's venue, a private residence on the Grand Canal, was apparently decorated with tapestries and pictures like Priuli's palace in 1608, as well as with a display of silver plate reputedly worth 5,000 ducats. Cloth of gold, a fabric which according to a sumptuary decree of 1549 'had always been forbidden' to Venetian patricians as 'inappropriate for private citizens' ['no[n] conveniente a privati cittadini'], covered the princely seat of honour.119 Adding to the general glittering effect achieved by the display of these objects within a candlelit interior were gilded bread, gilded oysters, gilded wax candles and forty or so women dressed in gold-patterned and silk clothes.120 We know about this event because it was recorded for posterity by the thwarted state chronicler Sanudo. However, Sanudo was not a disinterested historian: the owner of the palace in which this festa occurred - and whom he took care to mention at the start - was a young male relative.121 As this example suggests, the display of sumptuous personal effects at Venetian public events offered a means for private citizens to 126
avoid the negative associations which such ostentation normally entailed.122 While this private involvement in state ceremonial encourages us to question the purpose of civic sumptuary legislation, it also indicates that Venetian consumers remained sensitive to the ideological concerns provoked by unwarranted displays of such goods.123 This chapter has dwelt upon such mixed views of consumption in the Italian peninsula during the 'long' sixteenth century. In this respect it has adopted an approach advocated by the well-known historian of consumption John Brewer at a conference on the art market in Renaissance and Early Modem Italy held in the year this project began.124 Brewer urged the participants at that conference to become cultural anthropologists instead of economists, and he particularly championed the idea associated with the theorist Pierre Bourdieu, that people are essentially resistant to commodification. This idea - that people find it difficult to treat their belongings simply as objects of exchange - has informed certain recent studies of consumption and is supported, as far as Renaissance Italy is concerned, by Sharon Strocchia's investigation of the rituals associated with death in Renaissance Florence, as well as by Luke Syson and Dora Thornton's magisterial study of Renaissance art objects.125 The evidence from Venice cited in this chapter bears out Strocchia's argument that the social worth of the objects used in rituals such as funerals was more important than their material value.126 The example of Zuane the Venetian shopkeeper, for instance, who specified in 1579 that he wished to be buried in a Capuchin cowl, suggests that in spite of Venice's predominance as a hub of trade and retailing, economic considerations were not consistently uppermost in the minds of its citizens. Yet at the same time, the existence of the market cannot simply be ignored. As indicated at the start of this study, Venetian inhabitants took advantage of the developed commercial facilities available in their city. They acquired and disposed of material goods as a matter of course. In short, with the possible exception of the precious objects donated to serve liturgical functions (and even they occasionally cropped up on the second-hand market), sixteenth-century Venetians seem to have had few difficulties in treating their material possessions as commodities.127 For example, the numerous pious legacies left by Zuane, the 127
shopkeeper, in his will of 1579 (including 100 ducats to the money-shy Capuchins), were to be funded by auctioning off his material possessions.128 Acknowledging their active participation in the market for consumer goods does not, however, mean that Venetians were necessarily motivated by consumerism. Indeed, what is so interesting about sixteenth-century consumption is that is occurred alongside a dynamic and intricate ideological framework concerned with material goods. This chapter has highlighted the diverse range of ideas about the consumption of such goods which existed in the Italian peninsula during the period C.1450-C.1650, and it has also emphasized the co-existence of contradictory systems of beliefs within each of the three bodies of thought considered. Unfortunately it has not been possible to dofull justice to the dynamic nature of these ideological systems: to show, for example, how certain ideas were supposed to carry greater weight during specific phases of the religious calendar, such as at Lent, or during the different stages of a person's life cycle. An awareness of this varied, inconsistent and changeable ideological framework is useful because it enables us to appreciate that the ownership and use of material goods could not simply have been causes for 'celebration' and 'unashamed enthusiasm' in the period.129 In fact it encourages us to believe quite the opposite.130 While the exact extent to which these ideas impacted upon a particular individual’s patterns of consumption remains extremely hard to gauge, it is clear that the possession and deployment of material goods not only required sixteenth-century Venetians to engaged with, but also to negotiate their way carefully among a plethora of contradictory values. Knowledge of this ambiguous complex of beliefs complicates our understanding of consumption as a 'long' sixteenth-century phenomenon, but historical analyses of the subject which are informed by it are likely to be much more convincing.
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Notes 1 See, for example, Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism, New York, 1983, pp. ix-xi (which also highlights the 'hedonistic nature of consumerism on p. 2); John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds, Consumption and the World of Goods, London, 1993, pp. 1-3; and Jan De Vries, 'Luxury in the Dutch Golden Age in Theory and Practice', in Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, eds, Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, Basingstoke, 2003, p. 41. For an in-depth analysis of historical consumerism, see Sara Pennell, 'Consumption and Consumerism in Early Modern England', Historical Journal, 42 (1999), pp. 549-64, especially p. 552. 2 Randolph Starn, The European Renaissance', in Guido Ruggiero, ed., A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance, Oxford, 2002, p. 49. Relevant works are Mukerji, 1983; Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600, Baltimore, 1993; and Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance, London, 1996. Cf. Ingrid D. Rowland, The Renaissance Revealed', New York Review of Books, 6 November 1997, p. 30; and Berg and Eger, eds, 2003, pp. 1, 3, which sees the eighteenth century as the watershed for debates about 'consumer desires and practices'. For a brief summary of eighteenth-century developments, see James C. Riley, 'A Widening Market in Consumer Goods', in Euan Cameron, ed., Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History, Oxford, 1999, pp. 257-60. 3 On its development see Peter N. Stearns, 'Stages of Consumerism: Recent Work on the Issues of Periodization', Journal of Modern History, 69 (1997), pp. 102-17. Such efforts were strongly criticized by Lorna Weatherill in 'The Meaning of Consumer Behaviour in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-century England', and, from a different perspective, by Jean-Christophe Agnew, 'Coming Up for Air: Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective', which are both in Brewer and I’orter, eds, 1993, pp. 207-8 and 19-39. 4 For a classic synthesis which built on Burckhardt's ideas of modernity, see Alfred Von Martin, Sociology of the Renaissance, London, 1944, pp.viii, 3. Cf. Gene Brucker, The Italian Renaissance', in Ruggiero, ed., 2002, pp. 23-35. The sort of teleological approach adopted by Goldthwaite, 1993, p. 5, and Jardine, 1996, was strongly criticized by Rowland, 1997, pp. 30-5, and Lauro Martines, The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society', RQ , 51 (1998), pp. 193-203. See also Maureen Quilligan, Renaissance Materialities: Introduction', Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 32:3 (2002), p. 428. On the various definitions of the term 'Renaissance' which are now used, see I’eter Burke, The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries, Oxford, 1998, p. 170; and on the ambiguities associated with the term 'Renaissance' in Venice, see Richard MacKenney, Renaissances: The Cultures of Italy, 1300-1600, Houndmills, Basingstoke, 2005. 5 Early Modern and Renaissance historians of the book interested in literary consumption have, for example, demonstrated how difficult it is to analyse receptivity to ideas. For an idea of the recent state of that field, see the special issue of Word & Image, 17 (2001), especially Roger Chartier, 'Afterword: Materiality and Meaning', pp. 181-3. Of particular relevance to this chapter are Craig Kallendorf, Virgil and the Myth of Venice: Books and Readers in the Italian Renaissance, Oxford, 1999, pp. 1-11, 205-12; and James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols, Leiden, New York, 1991, I, pp.xv-xviii. On the need for 'dialogue between "cultural studies" and "political- economy" through an inter-disciplinary approach' to modern consumption, see Peter Jackson et al„ eds, Commercial Cultures: Economies, Practices, Spaces, Oxford, 2000, pp. 1-3, and quote on p. 145. The inter-relationship of material and intellectual concerns within consumption, and the need to 'cross conventional intellectual boundaries' to access it, are also highlighted by Berg and Eger, eds, 2003, pp. 2, 4. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, rev. reprint, Aldershot, 1994, p. xi, also remains relevant. The advantages and pitfalls of such inter-disciplinarity are noted in the editors' introduction, 'Material Strategies Engendered', in Barbara Burman and Carole Turbin, eds, Material Strategies: Dress and Gender in Historical Perspective, Gender and History, special issue, Maldern, MA, 2003, p. 4. 6 The general problem with historical sources is noted by Lisa Tiersten, 'Redefining Consumer Culture: Recent Literature on Consumption and the Bourgeoisie in Western Europe', Radical History Review, 57 (1993), p. 137. For specific examples, see Marta Ajmar, Toys for Girls: Objects, Women and Memory in the Renaissance Household', in Marius Kwint, Christopher Breward and Jeremy Aynsley, eds, Material Memories, Oxford, 1999, pp. 75-89; and Patricia Allerston, 'L'abito usato', in Carlo Marco Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti, eds, La moda, Turin, 2003 (Storia d'ltalia, Annali, 19), pp. 572-3. See also Burke, 1994, p. xiii. 7 The terms 'long sixteenth century' and 'extended sixteenth century' are used here in preference to other problematical alternatives such as 'high' and 'late' Renaissance. On the terms, see Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II, 2 vols, Glasgow, 1976, II, pp. 893-5; and 134
Richard MacKenney, Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, C.1250-C. 1650, Totowa, NJ, 1987, pp. 78-9. The terms 'high Renaissance' and 'later Renaissance' are used, for example, in Burke, 1998, p. 13. On general problems with the term 'Renaissance', see n. 4 above. 8 Salvatore Ciriacono, 'Mass Consumption Goods and Luxury Goods: The De- Industrialization of the Republic of Venice from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century', in Herman Van der Wee, ed., The Rise and Decline of Urban Industries in Italy and in the Low Countries (Late Middle Ages - Early Modern Times), Leuven, 1988, pp. 4 2 -3 ; Paula Lanaro, I mercati nella repubblica venela: economie cittadine e stato territoriale (secoli XV-XVIII), Venice, 1999. 9 See MacKenney, 1987, pp. 85-8; Ennio Concina, Venezia nell'eta modema: strut- tura e funzioni, Venice, 1989, pp. 230-4; and also Patricia Allerston, The Market in Second-Hand Clothes and Furnishings in Venice, C.1500-C.1650', Ph.D. dissertation, European University Institute, Florence, 1996, pp. 266-71. 10 Philippe Braunstein, 'Un Etranger dans la ville, Albrecht Diirer', in Philippe Braunstein, ed., Venise 1500: La Puissance, la novation et la concorde: le Triomphe du mythe, Paris, 1993, pp. 216, 219-20, 222-4, 226, 228. Diirer's role as a book-buyer for Pirckheimer is noted by Jardine, 1996, p. 225. 11 Braunstein, 1993, p. 226, 23 September 1506. See also pp. 224, 228-9. 12 See Patricia Allerston, 'Wedding Finery in Sixteenth-Century Venice', in Trevor Dean and Kate J. P. Lowe, eds, Marriage in Italy, 1300-1650, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 25-40; and Patricia Allerston, 'Clothing and Early Modem Venetian Society', Continuity and Change, 15 (2000), 367-90; and Allerston, 2003. For examples of book-lending, see Susan Connell, 'Books and their Owners in Venice 1345-1480', 1WCI, 35 (1972), pp. 173-4. Thefts of antique objects are noted by Marilyn Perry, 'Cardinal Domenico Grimani's Legacy of Ancient Art to Venice', IWCI, 41 (1978), pp. 228-9. For a book of Seneca's letters left as a pledge (with some clothes) against a debt of 12 ducats in Venice in 1462, see Connell, 1972, p. 173. 13 Braunstein, 1993, p. 219, 28 February 1506. They contained an emerald, a ruby and a diamond. He was told they were worth 24 ducats, but good acquaintances subsequently said they were worth only 22 ducats. He sent them to Pirckheimer to have valued and keep for that value, if he liked them. On such exchanges, see also Matchette's essay (chapter 10). 14 On the study of consumer culture in Early Modern Europe, and the identification of that culture among people without surplus economic means, see Tiersten, 1993, pp. 118, 139-40. 15 See, for example, Patricia Fortini Brown, 'Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites', in John Martin and Dennis Romano, eds, Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian CityState, 1297-1797, Baltimore, 2000, pp. 295-338; and Allerston, 2000; cf. Fritz Schmidt, 'Zur Genese kapitalistischer Konsumformen im Venedig der Friihen Neuzeif, in Jurgen Reulecke, ed., Stadtgeschichte als Zivilisationsgeschichte: Beitriige zutn Wandel stddtischer Wirtschafts-, Lebens- und Wahrnehmungsuieisen, Essen, 1990, pp. 23-40. Relevant works on other parts of Italy include Sharon Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence, Baltimore, 1992, p. 30; and Sandra Cavallo, 'What did Women Transmit? Ownership and Control of Household Goods and Personal Effects in Early Modern Italy/, in Moira Donald and Linda Hurcombe, eds, Gender and Material Culture in Historical Perspective, London, 2000, pp. 38-53. 16 On this approach, see John Styles, 'Custom or Consumption? Plebian Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England', in Berg and Eger, eds, 2003, pp. 105-6. 17 See especially Jardine, 1996, and Goldthwaite, 1993, but also Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy, London, 2001. A rare exception was Mary Rogers, 'Evaluating Textiles in Renaissance Venice', in Gabriele Neher and Rupert Shepherd, eds, Revaluing Renaissance Art, Aldershot, 2000, pp. 121-36. In this respect, Peter Burke, 'Conspicuous Consumption in Seventeenth-Century Italy', in The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 143-5, remains relevant. On negative attitudes in general, see Joyce Appleby, 'Consumption in Early Modern Social Thought', in Brewer and Porter, eds, 1993, p. 162. 18 See the important contribution by Syson and Thornton, 2001, pp. 10, 12-36, as well as Dora Thornton, The Scholar in his Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy, New Haven, 1997, pp. 1-8, 177; Guido Guerzoni, 'Liberalitas, Magnificentia, Splendor: The Classic Origins of Italian Renaissance Lifestyles', in Neil de Marchi and Crauford D. W. Goodwin, eds, Economic Engagements ivith Art, Durham, NC, 1999, pp. 332-78; and Evelyn Welch, 'Giovanni Pontano's De Splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts', Journal of Design History, 15 (2002), pp. 211-29. Specifically on Venice, see Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Anticjuily: The Venetian Sense of the Past, New Haven, 1996, pp. 206, 24 2 -5 and 248. More generally on the utility of humanist thought to Renaissance elites, see Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance 135
Italy, London, 1980, pp. 269-73, 440-1, 467. Reservations about the narrowness of this definition of culture are expressed by Gene Brucker, The Italian Renaissance', in Ruggiero, ed., 2002, p. 25. 19 Burke, 1998, p. 175. Burke described the consumption of classicizing objects as part of a process by which 'fashionable' Renaissance ideas became 'domesticated', see ibid., p. 14 and chapter 5. See also Taylor's essay (chapter 8), which discusses what Pietro Aretino called the 'anciently modern' appeal of Giulio Romano's silverware. The early sixteenth-century 'Dickhead Plate', attributed tofrancesco of Urbino, in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, demonstrates that these artefacts were not solely restricted to edifying messages. On the acquisition of this plate, see The Guardian, 18 September 2003. 20 The goblet is discussed by Syson and Thornton, 2001, on pp. 52-3; see also chapter 5, pp. 182-200, on the technological aspects of glass. On the ability of glass to express refined taste as well as aristocratic status, see Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice, New Haven, 2004, pp. 217-40. 21 See William J. Bouwsma, The Twofaces of Humanism: Stoicism and Augustinianism in Renaissance Thought', in Heiko A. Oberman and Thomas A. Brady, eds, ltinerarium ltalicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of its European Transformations, London, 1975, pp. 3 -4; Paul O. Kristeller, The Moral Thought of Renaissance Humanism', in Renaissance Thought, II: Papers on Humanism and the Arts, New York, 1961, p. 33; and Martines, 1980, p. 440. 22 See Martines, 1980, p. 291, on the 'two different humanist moods on the moral worth of riches. One in praise and one in blame', although on pp. 291-2 he qualifies the impact of these moods. 23 See Hankins, 1991, I, pp. 3 -7; Burke, 1998, pp. 206-7; Fortini Brown, 1996, pp. 104, 118, 219; and Syson and Thornton, 2001, pp. 23-9, 87-9. On the notion of Platonic thought as 'commonplace' in sixteenth-century Europe, see Eustace M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, London, 1973, p. 25. The importance of Aristotelian and Ciceronian ideas for Renaissance Italian material history has been re-emphasized by James Lindow, 'Magnificence and Splendour: The Palace in Renaissance Florence', Ph.D. thesis, Royal College of Art, London, 2004, chapter 1. See also Shepherd's essay below (chapter 2). 24 Syson and Thornton, 2001, pp. 51-2 (beauty and mirrors); see also Thornton, 1997, pp. 127, 167-74 on other reasons for having mirrors. On the communal ownership of goods for members of the ruling elite, see Hankins, 1991, 1, pp. 74, 77, 133-4, 141-2, 176, 229-30; see also p. 348 on beauty. For Platonic views on luxury, see Christopher Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 4 5 -6 2 (Roman reservations are discussed on pp. 63-77). On this concept, see also John Sekora, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett, Baltimore, 1977, and 'Fill Wahnbaeck, Luxury and Public Happiness: Political Economy in the Italian Enlightenment, Oxford, 2004. Surprisingly, Berg and Eger, eds, 2003, does not analyse the problematical notion of luxury in detail. Christian responses to this concept, which added lust to the equation, are discussed below. 25 Quoted in Paul F. Grendler, Critics of the Italian World 1530-1560: Anton Francesco Doni, Nicolb Franco & Ortensio Lando, Madison and Milwaukee, 1969, p. 174. The compatibility of Plato's Republic with religious ideas, and its close relationship to Renaissance utopianism, are highlighted by Luigi Firpo in Political Philosophy: Renaissance Utopianism', in Eric Cochrane, ed., The Late Italian Renaissance 1525- 1630, London, 1970, pp. 155-6, 158, 163. On Doni's own medal and print collection, see Thornton, 1997, p. 119. 26 Cf. Martines, 1980, pp. 452, 457-8, which instead emphasizes the importance of Platonic ideas about love and beauty. Doni was one of several writers of modest origins who lived by their pens in early sixteenth-century Venice and as such have been seen as a means of understanding prevailing attitudes. See Grendler, 1969, pp. 3-19. On Doni see ibid., pp. 49-65; and Claudia di Filippo Bareggi, II mestiere di scrivere: lavoro intellettuale e mercato librario a Venezia nel Cinquecento, Rome, 1988, pp. 26-31. On the use of texts produced by popular writers to detect sources of popular resentment, see James S.Amelang, Vox Populi: Popular Autobiographies as Sources for Early Modern Urban History', Urban History, 20:1 (1993), p. 35. 27 See Grendler, 1969, pp. 71-135; and John Martin, Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City, Berkeley, 1993. The theme of Venice 'as the ground for utopian thought in the sixteenth century' also underlies Marion Leathers Kuntz Venice, Myth and Utopian Thought in the Sixteenth Century: Bodin, Postel and the Virgin of Venice, Aldershot, 1999. 28 The similarities between Stoic and Platonic ideas in this respect were highlighted by Erasmus in 1503 in his The Handbook of the Militant Christian (Enchiridon Militis Christiani): see John P. Dolan, ed., The Essential Erasmus, New York and Scarborough, Ontario, 1964, p. 45. Stoic rejection of worldly things is also highlighted by Sekora, 1977, pp. 33-4; and Berry, 1994, p. 63. On the nature of Stoicism and its place in contemporary intellectual thought, see Bouwsma, 1975, pp. 6-7, 10-11, 17-33, 58; Stephen D. Bowd and J. Donald Cullington, 136
Two Renaissance Treatises: Carlo Valgulio of Brescia on Funerals and Music', Annali queriniani, 3 (2002), pp. 144, 153-7; and Burke, 1998, pp. 207-9; cf. Kristeller, 1961, p. 35. Ancient reservations about the consumption of goods are also discussed by Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy 1200-1500, Oxford, 2002, pp. 9-17. 29 This distinction is highlighted by Syson and Thornton, 2001, pp. 229, 233. A somewhat different interpretation of the same phenomenon is given in Von Martin, 1944, p. 60. 30 Poggio Bracciolini's depiction of Venetian nobles as 'boorish merchants' is noted in Connell, 1972, p. 178, n. 166; see also pp. 163, 175-82 for the library which contained books in Greek and humanists' works which was the exception in Connell's sample. Hankins, 1991, 1, p. 142, sees Plato's Republic as having a warmer reception in Milan than in republican Venice and Florence. Kallendorf, 1999, which posits the broad-based appeal of Virgil's poetry in Venice during the later 1400s and early 1500s, includes a useful summary of past scholarship on this topic on pp. 19-20. For a broad-ranging and informative reassessment of this presumed indifference, see Fortini Brown, 1996; also Ronald G. Witt, 'In the Footsteps of the Ancients': The Origins of Humanism from Lornto to Bruni, Leiden, 2000, pp. 454-75. An addition is Virginia Cox, 'Rhetoric and Humanism in Quattrocento Venice', RQ , 41 (2003), 652-94. 31 Fortini Brown, 1996, argued that while Venice did become a centre of classical scholarship (pp. 147, 272), the Venetian interest in the antique was pursued in aesthetic and tangible forms such as images and artefacts, and in ephemeral events such as pageants, rather than in written texts (pp. 60, 183, 206-7, 219, 221). She also notes that this interest was initially associated with the domestic sphere, rather than the public one (pp. 33, 248-52). Isabella Palumbo-Fossati also raised this issue in 'L'interno della casa dell'artigiano e dell'artista nella Venezia del Cinquecento', SV, new ser., 8 (1984), p. 147 (see also p, 133 on the relative lack of books in inventories); whereas John J. Martin made a similar point, about Palladio's engagement with classical ideas, in a paper given at the conference of the Renaissance Society of America held in New York in April 2004 ('Andrea and Palladio'). The existence of varieties of antiquarianism, divided between philological and 'archaeological' activities, has usefully been highlighted by Daniel Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture, 1500-1730, Oxford, 2003, pp. 141-7. 32 On these and other collections, see C. A. Levi, Le collezioni veneziani d'arte e d'antichita dal secolo XIV ai nostri giomi, Venice, 1900; Marino Zorzi, ed., Collezioni di antichita a Venezia nei secoli della repubblica, Rome, 1988; Perry, 1978, pp. 215-44; Thornton, 1997, pp. 99-100, 114-19; and Fortini Brown, 2004, pp. 217-40. For evidence of earlier collections, see Fortini Brown, 1996, pp. 59, 77; Thornton, 1997, p. 10. 33 Fortini Brown, 1996, makes this point forcibly on p. 206; the impact of classicizing motifs on the minor arts is also noted by Palumbo-Fossati, 1984, p. 147. The copies and modern works in Odoni's collection are discussed by P. Debus, 'Portraits de collectionneurs: a propos de quelques collectionneurs venitiens au XVIe siecle', in Laurence B. Dolleas, ed., Le commerce de Part de la Renaissance a nos jours, Besangon, 1992, pp. 4 4 - 5 ; ancj an inventory of Odoni's possessions is reproduced in Georg Gronau, 'Beitrage zum Anonymous Morellianus', Italienische Forschungen, 4 (1911), pp. 56-71; see also Monika A. Schmitter, The Display of Distinction: Art Collecting and Social Status in Early Sixteenth Century Venice', Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1997, pp. 135-285. For a detailed insight into the broad range of classicizing art objects produced in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, see Syson and Thornton, 2001. 34 See Fortini Brown, 1996, for example pp. 117-41, 193-222, 232-46. A chapter is devoted to 'all'antica style' in Syson and Thornton, 2001, pp. 78-134; see also Taylor's essay below (chapter 8). On the classical credentials of glass, and attempts to imitate and perfect upon ancient glass-making techniques in Venice, see Syson and Thornton, 2001, pp. 186-9. 35 The quote is from Palumbo-Fossati, 1984, p. 147; Thornton, 1997, p. 10, also discusses this subject. See Kallendorf, 1999, pp. 140-204, for his ideas about the broad Venetian readership of Virgil. 36 See Palumbo-Fossati, 1984, pp. 146-7 (miniature painter, 1576) and pp. 122, 129 (lead founder, 1590, the painting hung in the kitchen). For the carpenter obliged to sell his copies of 'Paladio' and 'Batta Alberti de archittettura', see ASV, Signori di Notti al Civil, busta 271, Vendite, registro 1, fol.25r, 28 September 1601; and for the smith, ibid., fol.26r, 5 October 1601: 'turqueseta d'oro all'antiga'. On Palladio's cabinet designs, see Thornton, 1997, pp. 71-2. Burke, 1998, also dates what he calls the 'domestication' of Renaissance thought (including the popularity of images of emperors) to the 'later Renaissance' (c. 1530-1630), although he downplays the involvement of lower social groups outside Venice and Florence; see pp. 170-1, 187. 37 Carlo Goldoni, La famiglia dell'antiquario (1750), Turin, 1983. See especially Act I, Scenes 1, 16 and 18; Act II, Scenes 9, 10 and 11. 137
38 See Burke, 1998, pp. 170-1. 39 Syson and Thornton, 2001, pp. 92-5; see also p. 16. On emulation as a spur to such consumption, see Thornton, 1997, p. 9; cf. Allerston, 2000, pp. 368-9. 40 Thornton, 1997, pp. 72-3, illustrates and discusses Fosco's portrait medal. Palumbo- Fossati, 1984, cites the inventoried possessions of Fosco, who, at the time of his death in 1582, owned a cabinet painted with 'figure e prospettive', as well as works by Serlio, Alberti and Vignola, and a book 'in stampa di rami di diversi disegni di prospettive di sepolchri di principi': see pp. 118-38, esp. pp. 122-3, 134-5. For another example, see Victoria Avety, The House of Alessandro Vittoria Reconstructed', Sculpture Journal, 5 (2001), p. 20. 41 Burke made the valuable point that objects could speak more than one language in 'The Presentation of Self in the Renaissance Portrait', in Burke, 1987, p. 158; see also Strocchia, 1992, p. 30. The methodological difficulties posed by overly narrow inteipretations of other sorts of historical texts are also highlighted by Chartier, 2001, p. 182. See also my review of Syson and Thornton, 2001, in RS, 17 (2003), p. 134. 42 On the 'detailed, almost autobiographical' nature of this will, see Peter Humfrey, Lorenzo Lotto, New Haven, 1997, p. 2. On the utility of artisans' personal documents - including the bombastic autobiography of the infamous sculptor Benvenuto Cellini - to reconstruct the 'multiple identities of humble citizens from the past', see Amelang, 1993, p. 35. 43 On seal-dies with ancient devices, see Thornton, 1997, pp. 128-30. On Lotto's use of his cameos as pledges against debts, see Lorenzo Lotto, II 'Libro di spese diverse' con aggiunta di lettere e d'altri documenti, ed. Pietro Zampetti, Rome, 1969, pp. 158-9, December 1547-January 1548 (Venice); pp. 162-3, January-February, 21 May 1552 (Rome and Ancona); pp. 177-91, various dates and references, 1540-54. For his attempts to sell the cameos, see ibid., pp. Ill, 113, 4 September 1548, and 118, 27 November 1550. On his use of his seals on letters, see Mauro Zanchi, Lorenzo Lotto e I'immaginario alchemico, Clusone BG, n.d., p. 7. 44 See Lotto, II 'Libro di spesi diverse', 1969, p. 304, 25 March 1546: 'Ancora un anello doro ligato una belissima corniola antica, con una gruva che si leva a volo con un iugo ai piedi et in becho el segno de Mercurio, significato la vita activa e la contem- plativa con meditazione spirituale levarsi dale cose terrene.' A manuscript copy is in the Archivio delle Istituzioni di Ricovero e di Educazione, Venice, Testamenti no. 76. On the ownership of such goods in intellectual and higher social circles, see Syson and Thornton, 2001, pp. 83-90; and for a Venetian example, Perry, 1978, p. 216, n. 4, p. 217. 45 It evokes the Platonic ideal, as reinterpreted by Christian Humanist scholars, of spiritual union with God, as well as Ciceronian ideas about active and contemplative lives. On the former, see The Letters of Marsilioficino, trans. members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, I, London, 1975, nos 91 and 108, pp. 141, 162; as well as Stephen D. Bowd, Reform before the Reformation: Vincenzo Querini and the Religious Renaissance in Italy, Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2002, p. 62; the Platonic scheme is also succinctly and very clearly explained by Tillyard, 1973, pp. 25-8. On the latter, see Kristeller, 1961, pp. 54-5; and Bowd, 2002, p. 9. in this respect Lotto's gem is reminiscent of the intarsia hieroglyphs which he designed for the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo in the 1520s. See Zanchi, n.d.; and also Humfrey, 1997, pp. 82-5, 90-2. Zanchi detects a mixture of biblical, alchemical, Kabbalistic, Greek philosophical and Egyptian hermetical sources in Lotto's intarsie (p. 3). Similar intellectual concerns are evident in the hieroglyphic frieze in Sebastian del Piombo's contemporaneous portrait of Andrea Doria (1526, Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Rome). See Michael Flirst, Sebastiano del Piombo, Oxford, 1981, PI. 124 and pp. 105-6. While noting that Lotto's knowledge of Latin was purely functional, Zanchi (n.d., pp. 2 -3) and Humfrey (1997, pp. 21, 46) place Lotto within circles of scholars interested in these intellectual issues. 46 On the use of such mnemonic devices in the period, see Woolf, 2003, pp. 263-7. Useful general points about the contemporary importance of such ideas about salvation, and the utility of the Platonic scheme - to 'the mystically minded' - for explaining it in the period, are also highlighted by Tillyard, 1973, p. 29. Pietro Aretino notoriously mocked Lottofor his religious zeal in a letter dated 1548 reproduced in Lotto, Il 'Libro di spese diverse', 1969, pp. 305-6; see also Humfrey, 1997, p. 158; whereas Vasari described Lotto's piety and unworldliness in Le vite de' piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini, IV, Florence, 1976, p. 554 (life of Lotto); see also Humfrey, 1997, p. 4. For an in-depth discussion of Lotto's spirituality and of his relationships with heretical Venetians, see Massimofirpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici: il mondo di Lorenzo Lotto tra riforma e controriforma, Rome, 2004. 47 Bowd and Cullington, 2002, p. 148. 48 Cf. Hans Baron, 'Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth as Factors in the Rise of Humanistic Thought', Speculum, 13 (1938), pp. 1-37; David Chambers, The Economic Predicament of Renaissance Cardinals', in 138
Renaissance Cardinals and their Worldly Problems, Aldershot, 1997, I, p. 311; and Goldthwaite, 1993, pp. 204-12. On the remarkably persistent notion of religious poverty, which had inspired the early founders of monastic orders as well as many subsequent waves of religious reformers, see Rowland, 1997; Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe, London, 1978; Paul Christophe, Les Pauvres et la pauvrete, 2 vols, I: Des origines au XVe siecle, Paris, 1985; II: Du XVIe siecle a nos jours, Paris, 1987. The problems posed by such worldly vanities were detailed in the influential and widely distributed religious work of 1418, attributed to Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, London, 1886, book 1, ch. 1, p. 5. 49 See R. Po-Chia Hsia, 'Religious Cultures (Spirituality, Reform, High and Low)', and Brucker, 2002 in Ruggiero, ed., 2002, pp. 333-48, 25-31; cf. Von Martin, 1944, p. 18, for a classic dismissal; and John Martin, 'Recent Italian Scholarship in the Renaissance', RQ , 48 (1995), p. 609. Key works include Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance, Princeton, 1970; and Ottavia Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy, trans. Linda G. Cochrane, Princeton, 1990. For a revision of Niccoli's ideas about the early demise of prophetic ideas, see Bowd, 2002, pp. 191-2. Sixteenth-century examples of preachers and bonfires of 'vanities' are given in Maria G. Muzzarelli, ed., La legislazione suntuaria, secoli XUI-XVl: Emilia-Romagna, Rome, 2002, p. xx. On the 'considerable influence' which millenarian ideas continued to exercise in Venice and elsewhere throughout the sixteenth century, see Martin, 1993, pp. 16, 112-15. For a pertinent example, given the emphasis on poverty, see Marion Leathers Kuntz, The Virgin of Venice and Concepts of the Millennium in Venice', in Leathers Kuntz, 1999, essay VII, pp. 111-30. 50 See Christophe, 1985, II, pp. 23, 25, 31, 187; as well as the references in the previous note; cf. Martines, 1980, p. 292. For a contemporary description of a 'bonfire of vanities' held in Savonarolan Florence in 1496, see Luca Landucci, A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516, trans. Alice De Rosen Jervis, London, 1927, pp. 130-1. On the idea of Renaissance Christianity as a dynamic force which shaped society instead of just reflecting it, see Martin, 1993, p. 20. A particularly vehement contribution was made by Piero Camporesi, The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe, trans. Lucinda Byatt, Cambridge, 1990 (first pub as La casa dell'etemitb, Milan, 1987). See pp. 24, 28, 36. 51 The reconceptualization of the chronology of reform in the sixteenth century is central to John W. O'Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modem Era, Cambridge, MA and London, 2000, especially pp. 131, 135; and Peter G. Wallace, The Long European Reformation, Houndmills, Basingstoke, 2004. See also Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation, Houndmills, Basingstoke, 1999; and Bowd, 2002, especially pp. 5-6, 25, 178, 229. 52 The place of religious poverty in the late sixteenth-century reforms of nunneries is explored in Silvia Evangelisti, 'Monastic Poverty and Material Culture in Early Modern Italian Convents', Historical Journal, 47:1 (2004), pp. 1-20. On the role of property in Venetian initiatives, see Jutta G. Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice, Chicago and London, 1999, pp. 120-4; and Mary Laven, Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in the Renaissance Convent, London, 2002, p. 2. Cf. Christophe, 1985, II, pp. 67,188. 53 Felix Gilbert considered religious considerations to be the 'primary reason' behind the introduction of sumptuary legislation in this period; see Felix Gilbert, Venice in the Crisis of the League of Cambrai', in J. R. Hale, ed., Renaissance Venice, London, 1973, pp. 275-80. See also Gaetano Cozzi, 'Authority and the Law in Renaissance Venice', in Hale, ed., 1973, pp. 309-12; Stephen D. Bowd, 'How to be a Renaissance Hermit', Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 16:1 (1998), pp. 10, 14; Giulio Bistort, II magistrato alle pompe nella republica [sic] di Venezia: studio storico, Bologna, 1969 (facsimile of 1912 edition), pp. 51-5; and Luca Mola, 'Leggi suntuarie in Veneto', in Maria G. Muzzarelli and Antonella Campanini, eds, Disciplinare il lusso: la legislazione suntuaria in Italia e in Europa tra Medievo ed eta moderna, Rome, 2003, p. 49. For a brief introduction to the League and its impact on Venice, see Gaetano Cozzi and Michael Knapton, La Repubblica di Venezia nell'eta moderna: dalla guerra di Chioggia al 1517, Turin, 1986 (Storia d'ltalia 12:1), pp. 91-5; and William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation, Berkeley, CA, 1968, p. 103. Cf. Michael Mallett, Venetian Elites in the Crises of the Early Sixteenth Century', in Stella Fletcher and Christine Shaw, eds, The World of Savonarola: Italian Elites and Perceptions of Crisis, Aldershot, 2000, pp. 151-61. 54 See the draft minute in Hubert Jedin, 'Vincenzo Querini und Pietro Bembo', in Kirche des Glaubens Kirche der Geschichte: ausgewdhlte Aufsatze und Vortrage, 2 vols, Freiburg i. B., 1966, I, p. 165. On Querini's reform programme and his antipathy towards 'worldly honours', see Bowd, 2002, pp. 128, 138-41, 149-71. The personal choices made by Querini, in the early 1500s, are a dramatic example of the spiritual ideal of religious 139
poverty in action. Having adopted a semi-monastic life within his family's palace, he subsequently decided to reject his privileged circumstances completely, leaving Venice to enter a Camaldolese hermitage in 1511. See ibid., pp. 12, 61-85; and Bowd, 1998, p. 10. 55 On Miani and his circle, as well as the worn, old clothes which Miani and his friend Andrea Lippomano chose to wear, see Carlo Pellegrini, 'S. Girolamo Miani istitutore della cura degli orfani e confondatore dell'Ospedale dei Derelitti', in San Girolamo M iani e Venezia nel V° centenario della nascita: atti delle celebrazioni tenutesi nella chiesa di S. Maria dei Derelitti 8-15 feb. 1986, Venice, n.d., pp. 19-20, 27-8, 33. On Miani, see also Giuseppe Ellero, 'Un ospedale della riforma cattolica veneziana: i Derelitti ai SS Giovanni e Paolo', Tesi di Laurea, Universita degli Studi di Venezia, 1980-81, pp. 67-70. 56 Dolan, ed., 1964, p. 62 (The Handbook of the Militant Christian, 1503), p. 170 (The Praise of Folly, 1509). On the proposal made at the Council ofTrent, that the Handbook of the Militant Christian be made available to all future priests, see ibid., p. 24. On the use of pagan writings for religious ends, see ibid., pp. 63-4, also p. 36. Ficino made a similar point in a letter to Lorenzofranceschi: see Ficino, Letters, 1975, no. 108, p. 162. Tillyard, 1973, pp. 2, 19, makes the valuable general point that Platonic ideas had informed the religious world view of Christians well before the Platonic revival during the fifteenth century. 57 Niccolo Nelli, Proverbii, Venice: Fernando Bertelli, 1564. For proverbs as a means of accessing contemporary perceptions see Michelle A. Laughran, The Body, Public Health and Social Control in SixteenthCentury Venice', Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1998, pp. 37-9. However, this sheet of proverbs is unusual in being illustrated, and is more sophisticated than the sayings in Veneto dialect included in the popular early sixteenth-century collection: Manlio Cortelazzo, ed., Le died tavole dei proverbi, Vicenza, 1995. See also Gian Antonio Cibotto, Proverbi del Veneto, Florence, 1995 and 2000. For evidence that proverbs were also appreciated by an educated audience, see Ficino, Letters, no. 22, p. 60. A very similar expression is used by Erasmus in his guide for spiritual living, see Dolan, 1964, p. 71. 58 ASV, Notarile, Testamenti, Atti Cigrini, busta 199, no. 319, Zuane Strazzaruol - Sant'Apolinar, 17 November 1579. On the poverty and asceticism associated with the Capuchins (who witnessed their heyday of popularity in the 1600s), see Bireley, 1999, pp. 28-9. Lotto made a similar request in his will of 1546, and he subsequently dedicated him self and all his worldly possessions to the Holy House of Loreto, becoming a lay brother in that institution in 1554. See Lotto, II 'Libro di spese diverse', 1969, p. 303 (1546 will; the funeral was part of the payment for his famous painting of the observant Dominican Saint Antonino), p. 151 and p. 298; also p. 311, 8 September 1554 (Loreto); and Firpo, 2004, p. 309. 59 Thomas Coryate, Coryat's Crudities 1611, introduction by W. M. Schutte, London, 1978, p. 255: '... because they beleeve there is such virtue in the Friers cowle, that it will procure them remission of the third part of their sinnes ...'. Strocchia, 1992, p. 236, cited this example as proof of the long-term continuities in the ritualistic use of symbols in Renaissance Italy. 60 Strocchia, 1992, also makes this important point on pp. 236-7; and highlights the 'very powerful statement' made by opting to be buried in a mendicant habit when the practice was no longer standard, on p. 41. On the 'anxiety of all anxieties' provoked by death in the late seventeenth century; and for horrific seventeenth- and eighteenth-century descriptions of the hell which awaited sinful people, see Camporesi, 1990, pp. 36, 58-9. Cf. Christophe, 1985, II, p. 67. 61 Cesare Vecellio, Habiti antichi et moderni di tutto il mondo di Cesare Vecellio di nuovo accresciuti di molte figure, Venice, 1598 (orig. pub. 1590), fols 104v-105r, 'Donne di Venetia attempate, & dismesse'. On this work, and its author, see Tiziana Conte, ed., Cesare Vecellio 1521c.-1601, Belluno, 2001, especially pp. 13-22, 125-54. 62 See, for example, the comments about 'cose del mondo' in Vasari 1976, p. 554 (life of Lotto). 63 A Kempis, 1886, book 1, chapter 1, p. 5. The animated nature of objects has been stressed by Anne Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, Cambridge, 2001, p. 2. 64 See Michelle A. Laughran, 'Oltre la pelle: i cosmetici e il loro uso', in Belfanti and Giusberti, eds, 2003, p. 58. On perfume burners, see Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400-1600, London, 1991, pp. 249-51. 65 On the furnishings used for special occasions in Venice -and legislative reactions to them, see Allerston, 1998, pp. 25-40. More generally, see P. Thornton, 1991, pp. 30, 44-53, 120-35, 158-61; and on Venice, Fortini Brown, 2004, pp. 79-81, 85-6. 66 In addition to being stored in coffers along with sweet-smelling herbs and pine needles, perfume was applied to interior furnishings to keep them clean, as well as fragrant on special occasions. See Carole Frick, 'Dressing a Renaissance City: Society, Economics and Gender in the Clothing of 15th-Century Florence', Ph.D. 140
dissertation, UCLA, 1995, pp. 430-1; Giovanventura Rosetti, Notandissimi secreti de I'arte profu- matoria (1555), ed. Franco Brunello and Franca Facchetti, 2nd edn, Vicenza, 1992, p. 116; and Allerston, 2003, p. 577. On some of the problems posed by bad-smelling textiles, see ibid. Attention was drawn to the colours of Venetian artefacts by Paul Hills, Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass 1250-1550, New Haven, 1999. 67 The role played by the senses in helping people to understand was emphasized by Ficino, Letters, 1975, no. 39, p. 80. The sensuous qualities of textiles and other types of goods were positively celebrated in the letters written by the Venetian habitue Pietro Aretino. See, for example, Pietro Aretino, II secondo libro delle lettere, 1, ed. Fausto Nicolini, Bari, 1916, letter 187, 29 May 1539, which highlights the sparkle of precious stones, pleasant smells and the delicate nature of fabrics among the pleasant diversions of life. On the sensuous nature of Aretino's writings and life, see Grendler, 1969, pp. 8-10. On the classical notion of splendour, see Welch, 2002, pp. 211-29; Lindow, 2004, chapter 2; and Shepherd's essay below (chapter 2). 68 For Neo-Platonic-influenced religious views of the senses, see Ficino, Letters, 1975, nos 39, 43 and 115, pp. 80, 85, 172; and most famously, Baldassare Castiglione, II libro del cortigiano con una scelta delle opere minori, ed. Bruno Maier, Turin, 2nd edn, 1964, pp. 514-18. See also Dolan, 1964, pp. 170-1 and 49-50. The hierarchy of the senses, in which touch was the basest and sight the highest, is noted by Bowd, 2002, p. 171. On the dangerous nature of the senses, see Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, Histoire des pechds capitaux au Moyen Age, Paris, 2003 (orig. pub. as I sette vizi capitali: storia dei pecati nel Medioevo, Turin, 2000), pp. 234-5, 238. In this respect they were like vainglory; see ibid., p. 62, and Maria G. Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale: vesti e societh dal XIII al XIV secolo, Bologna, 1999, pp. 324-36. Such negative ideas are among the reasons why Aretino's works were considered to be provocative, see Grendler, 1969, p. 17. In his letter to the Cardinal of Trent cited above (n. 67), Aretino notes that the sensual diversions mentioned might not be appropriate for his addressee. 69 Camporesi, 1990, pp. 58-9. For an explanation of social attitudes to the senses over time, see Robert Jutte, A History of the Senses: from Antiquity to Cyberspace, Cambridge, 2004. 70 Camporesi, 1990, p. 59 (example taken from a text published in Venice in 1670). 71 Berry, 1994, p. 101. The 'discourse of "luxury"' which 'pre-industrial societies deployed ... to discuss consumer behaviour' is also linked to the seven deadly sins by De Vries, 2003, p. 41. 72 On this close association, see Casagrande and Vecchio, 2003, p. 238; and Berry, 1994, p. 94, which discusses Augustinian ideas on the subject. According to Morton W. Bloomfield, whereas the seven sins were not deadly to start with, they became so over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. See Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1952, pp.viii, 43-4, 157. 73 On 'the breadth of meaning possessed by the term [luxury] in pre-modern discourse', and the addition of lust as the 'Christian contribution' to this ancient concept, see Berry, 1994, pp. 87-98, and Sekora, 1977, pp. 42, 45-7. 74 For the quote, see Valerio Rossato, 'Religione e moralita in un merciaio veneziano del Cinquecento', SV, new ser., 13 (1987), p. 241. 75 See Syson and Thornton, 2001, p. 229, and, more generally, Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600-1800, New York, 2002, pp. 63-7; cf. Burke, 1987, pp. 133-4. The term 'luxury' has been deployed in its modern senses in many studies on the Italian peninsula, including my own. For an idea of the ambiguities its use can cause, see Kovesi Killerby, 2002, p. 160. 76 Coryate, Crudities, 1978, pp. 265-7, at 266. 77 The Vanity and vice' quote is from R. Ascham, The Schoolmaster (1570)', in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 5th edn, I, New York, 1986, p. 1026. See especially Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller or the Life of Jacke Wilton (1594), ed. Herbert F. B. Brett-Smith, Oxford, 1920, p. 96, whose fictional protagonist describes Italy as 'the Paradise of the Earth, and the Epicure's heaven'. Like Coryate later, Nashe also placed his traveller in a Venetian courtesan's house in which eveiy room was like 'a haberdasher's shop' (p. 52). 78 Anon., La Venexiana, text and trans. ed. Ludovico Zorzi, Turin, 1965, Act II, Scene 4: No spetar pi. Aparecia el mezao cun le so spaliere; meti el sopragelo a la letiera; trova li acanini da brusar, sastu? fia dofre.' 79 On this image, see Aurelio Rigoli and Annamaria Amitrano Savarese, eds, Fuoco, acqua, cielo, terra: stampe popolari profane della 'Civica Raccolta Achille Bertarelli’, Vigevano, 1995, p. 431. For more subtle artistic depictions of sensuous goods, see Rogers, 2000, pp. 125-6. 141
80 See Casagrande and Vecchio, 2003, pp. 334-7, who also highlight the role of the seven capital sins in Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, as well as in Erasmus's Handbook of the Militant Christian, which was recommended to the Council of Trent for use by the reformed clergy. Cf. Bloomfield, 1952, pp. xiv, 123. 81 On these sculptures, which depict Luxury as 'a woman with a jewelled chain across her forehead, looking into a mirror and exposing her breast by drawing down her dress with one hand', see ibid., p. 104. An image of the fourteenth-century sculpture (a copy of which was carved in the fifteenth century) is reproduced in Wolfgang Wolters, La scultura veneziana gotica (1300-1460), 2 vols, Venice, 1976, II, fig. 237; see also ibid., I, pp. 173-8 (capital 27), and pp. 249-50 (capital 7). On the association of women and nakedness with the sin of Luxury, see Berry, 1994, pp. 89 and 98; and Sekora, 1977, pp. 43-5. The links between Venetian courtesans and material goods were highlighted in the late sixteenth century by Michel de Montaigne among others; see Journal de voyage de Michel de Montaigne, ed. Francois Rigolot, Paris, 1992, p. 69, and also Allerston, 2000, p. 380. 82 The idea that worldly wealth was corruptive and a threat to virtue was one of the oldest ideas associated with the term, which persisted into the Christian era; see Berry, 1994, p.xiii. 83 See II gioco dell'amore: le cortigiane di Venezia dal Trecento al Settecento, exhibition catalogue, Venice, 1990, pp. 180-1. On the Soccorso, see Bernard Aikema and Dulcia Meijers, Nel regno dei poveri: arte e storia dei grandi ospedali veneziani in eta moderna 1474-1797, Venice, 1989, pp. 241-8; see also Brian Pullan, 'Support and Redeem: Charity and Poor Relief in Italian Cities from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century', Continuity and Change, 3:2 (1988), p. 195 on such institutions. Benedetto Caliari worked closely with his more famous brother; see R. Cocke, Paolo Veronese: Piety and Display in an Age of Religious Reform, Aldershot, 2001, pp. 58, 201 and 204-5. On the atmosphere of religious reform which affected the Caliari workshop, see ibid, pp. 41-5 and 109-11. 84 Another pertinent visual example is the presumed Mary Magdalene, an early work by Caravaggio in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome. 85 On the use of the print as a fan, see Rigoli and Amitrano Savarese, eds, 1995, p. 431. For sumptuary restrictions on fans and decorated ones, see Bistort, 1969, pp. 198-200; and Fortini Brown, 2004, p. 151 (which also reproduces fan-related prints by Tozzi). Surviving examples of such 'weathercock' fans (with decorative turned handles) are reproduced in I mestieri della moda a Venezia/Serenissima: The Arts of Fashion in Venice from the 13th to the 18th Century, exhibition catalogue, Limena, 1995, p. 125, cat. 158; see also ibid., pp. 125 and 127, especially cat. 160, for examples of fans incorporating printed illustrations. A weathercock fan is also included in fig. 6. 86 Cf. Lidia D. Sciama, 'Lacemaking in Venetian Culture', in R. Barnes and J. B. Eicher, eds, Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning in Cultural Contexts, Providence and Oxford, 1993 (1st edn 1992), p. 127. On its religious uses, see, for example, E. Ricci, 'A Seventeenth-Century Altar-Cloth', Old Furniture: A Magazine of Domestic Ornament, 8:31 (December 1929), pp. 168-74; and for an interesting Jewish example, Dora Liscia Bemporad, 'Jewish Ceremonial Art in the Era of the Ghettos', in Vivian B. Mann, ed., Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989, pp. 124-6. 87 The wearing of lace was, for example, completely forbidden to the young female Venetian orphans in the Ospedaletto, who, like the Soccorso inmates, also made lace. See the 'Ordini per il Buon Govemo della Casa delle Figliole, Riformati l'anno 1667', reproduced in Arte e musica all'ospedaletto: schede d'archivio sull'attivith musicale degli ospedali dei Derelitti e dei Mendicanti di Venezia (sec. XVI-XVIII), exhibition catalogue, Venice, 1978 p. 145; and Rosa and Luigi Savio, 'L'organizzazione del lavorofemminile a Venezia nelle antiche istituzioni di ricovero e di educazione', in Alessandra Mottola Molfino and Maria Teresa Binaghi Olivari, eds, I pizzi: moda e simbolo, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 1977, pp. 39-40; as well as Maria Elena Vasaio, 'Il tessuto della virtu: le zitelle di S. Eufemia e di. S. Caterina dei Funari nella controriforma', Memoria, 11-12 (1984), p. 56. For a poem which associates the wearing of large pieces of lace with concubines and other women of dubious reputation, see L. Menetto and G. Zennaro, Storia del malcostume a Venezia nei secoli XVI e XVII, Abano Terme, 1987, p. 23. 88 ASV, Pompe, busta 6, Denuncie, 27 August 1639; see also Allerston, 2000, p. 380. For an example of a sumptuary law which specifically forbids lace to be used on such items, see Bistort, 1969, pp. 447-51, 20 August 1644; see also ibid., p. 457, 31 August 1644, for similar limits on prostitutes' clothes. 89 Kovesi Killerby, 2002, seeks to be comprehensive although it plays down religious motives, and stops at 1500. See especially pp. 61-91 and 110-32. See also Maria G. Muzzarelli, Gli inganni delle apparenze: disciplina di vesti e omamenti alia fine del Medioevo, Turin, 1996; and Muzzarelli and Campanini, 2003; as well as Alan 142
Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law, New York, 1996. Influential studies include Diane Owen Hughes, 'Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy', in John Bossy, ed., Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 69-99; and Edward R. Rainey, 'Sumptuary Legislation in Renaissance Florence', Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1985; whereas Muzzarelli, ed., 2002, is the first of an ambitious series of regional volumes which aims to publish the many sumptuary laws issued in the Italian peninsula up to c. 1600. On Venice, see the following note, as well as Bistort, 1969; Gina Fasoli, 'Lusso approvato e lusso riprovato', in F. Bocchi, ed., Memorial per Gina Fasoli: bibliografia ed alcuni inediti, Bologna, 1993, pp. 123-43; and M. Margaret Newett, The Sumptuary Laws of Venice in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries', in T. F.Tout and J.Tait, eds, Historical Essays by Members of the Owens College, Manchester, London, 1902, pp. 245-78. The religious scruples underlying Venetian laws are highlighted by Mola, 2003, p. 49. 90 See especially Peter Burke, Venice and Amsterdam: A Study of Seventeenth-Century Elites, London, 1974, p. 63; Piergiovanni Mometto, '"Vizi privati, pubbliche virtu": aspetti e problemi della questione del lusso nella repubblica di Venezia (secolo XVI)', in Luigi Berlinguer and Floriana Colao, eds, Crimine, giustizia e societa veneta in eta modema, Milan, 1989, pp. 237-70; and Fortini Brown, 2000, pp. 295-338 (summarized in Fortini Brown, 2004, pp. 150-3). Although it mostly deals with a later period, Erica Morato, Tra dovere e privilegio: "II vestir de' patrizi" nella legislazione suntuaria veneziana del Settecento', Cheiron, 16 (1999), pp. 187-201, is also very relevant. Cf. Allerston, 2000, pp. 373-4; and also Kovesi Killerby, 2002, p. 5, which criticizes such attempts to analyse sumptuary legislation in terms of particular forms of government. 91 A particularly vehement example is Edward Muir, 'Images of Power: Art and Pageantry in Renaissance Venice', American Historical Review, 84:1 (1979), pp. 31 and 33. This idea also underpins Fortini Brown, 2004, although it is much more restrained in its expression. Especially influential in this regard has been Burke, 1987, pp. 132-49, which applied the sociological-anthropological concept of 'conspicuous consumption' to the upper echelons of baroque Italian society, including Venice; see especially p. 144. On the social mobility associated with dynamic urban contexts, see Peter Burke, "'Material Civilisation" in the Work of Fernand Braudel', Itinerario, 5 (1981), p. 41. On this interpretation, and its applicability to Venice, see Allerston, 2000, pp. 374, 381. Increasing social differentiation in Venetian society is emphasized, for example, by Dennis Romano, in Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice, 1400-1600, Baltimore, 1996, pp. 227-35. 92 See the proclamation quoted in Fortini Brown, 2004, p. 153; and Morato, 1999, pp. 188-94. On this ideal view of the Venetian state, see, for example, Brian Pullan, "'Three Orders of Inhabitants": Social Hierarchies in the Republic of Venice', in Jeffrey Denton, ed., Orders and Hierarchies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Manchester, 1999, pp. 152, 153; and Muir, 1979, p. 48. 93 ASV, Pompe, busta 6 Denuncie, 18 January 1605 more veneto (mv). 94 The sumptuary laws governing such occasions are detailed in Bistort, 1969, pp. 201- 5; see also Doretta Davanzo Poli, 'L'abbigliamento in gravidanza, parto, puerperio', in Lia Chinosi, ed., Nascere a Venezia dalla Serenissima alia prima guerra mondiale, exhibition catalogue, Turin, n.d., p. 64. On childbirth festivities, see Jacqueline M. Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, New Haven, 1999 (the elaborate nature of Venetian events is discussion on p. 44); and more generally, Adrian Wilson, 'The Ceremony of Childbirth and its Interpretation', in Valerie Fildes, ed., Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England: Essays in Memory of Dorothy McLaren, London, 1990, pp. 68-107. 95 Francesco Sansovino, Venetia citta nobilissima, Venice, 1663 (rev. edn, orig. pub. 1581), p. 402. 96 ASV, Pompe, busta 6, Denuncie, 18 January 1605 (mv): 'haver visto la camera del partofornida con razzi di seda a figure alti da terra fino sotto al soffita ... con cassi di noghera intagliade et dorade con lavori di bronzzo [sic] ... letto con linzuoli lavoradi et letiera di fero dorada co[n] pavion di damascho zalo.' These goods were apparently seen by the capitano of the sumptuary magistrates and his men. Details of the sorts of goods forbidden on such occasions are cited by Bistort, 1969, pp. 203, 394-400 (1562), 46 3 -6 (1644). 97 Along with the denunciation against Pasquetta, this document is one of very few examples of enforcement by the sumptuary magistrates, and the outcomes are equivocal. The methodological problems cannot be underestimated, see Patricia Allerston, "'Contrary to the Truth and Also to the Semblance of Reality"? Entering a Venetian "Lying-in" Chamber (1605)', RS, 20:5 (2006), pp. 629-39. 98 ASV, Pompe, busta 6, Denuncie, 18 January 1605 (mv): 'La denontia data sotto di /18/ genaro passato contra la persona di me Vic.° Zuccato humil servo delle SS. W . Ecc.me, non solo e contraria alia verita ma anco al verisimile: Poiche se io in occasione delli molti parti di mia moglie, non sono mai uscito de i termini della modestia, et della tenue mia fortuna, et conditione, non e da credere che in questo parto, ch'e stato l'ultimo 143
di sette io habbia operato diversamente con fare quello, che in nissun tempo mi si conveniva.' The links drawn between expenditure and social condition, and the inappropriate association of a merchant with a sumptuous lifestyle, are highlighted by Fortini Brown, 2000, pp. 317-18; cf. Mola, 2003, p. 49. 99 See Fortini Brown, 2004, p. 153; Bistort, 1969, p. 60; Mometto, 1989, p. 245; Newett, 1902, p. 277; Mola, 2003, p. 54, and more generally, Kovesi Killerby, 2002, pp. 133-63. 100 ASV, Pompe, busta 6, Denuncie, 27 August 1639. 101 Ibid. On a previous attempt to prevent this type of intervention on the part of noble clients, see Michelle A. Laughran, The Body, Public Health and Social Control in Sixteenth-Century Venice', Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1998, p. 81. 102 The close identification of aristocratic interests with judicial structures and the problems posed by the socially embedded nature of the Venetian judicial system are central to Claudio Povolo, L'intrigo dell'onore: potere e istituzioni nella repubblica di Venezia Ira Cinque e Seicento, Verona, 1997; see, for example, p. 275. The topics of noble honour and criminal justice in Venice were also explored by Jonathan Walker, in chapter 4 of'H onour and the Culture of Male Venetian Nobles, c.1500-1650', Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1998. 103 This section is a condensed version of a paper on the practical arrangements behind these receptions, presented at the conference, 'Cultural Exchanges: The Courts of Europe in the Ancien Regime, Istituto Universitario Europeo', Florence, in 1992. Its findings are developed in my forthcoming book. On the political importance of such occasions, see ASV, Consiglio dei Dieci, Parti Comuni, filza 69, fol. 95, 12 November 1556; as well as Mackenney, 1987, pp. 137-8; Patricia Fortini Brown, 'Measured Friendship, Calculated Pomp: The Ceremonial Welcomes of the Venetian Republic', in Barbara Wisch and Susan Scott Munshower, eds, 'All the World's a Stage. . Art and Pageantry in the Renaissance and Baroque, University Park, PA, 1990, pp. 137-86; and Matteo Casini, I gesti del principe: la festa politica a Firenze e Venezia in eta rinasci- mentale, Venice, 1996, pp. 287-94. On the traditional and continuing importance of material wealth in Venetian public ritual, see Muir, 1979, p. 41. 104 ASV, Rason Vecchie (RV), busta 222, Spese fatte ... nelli refrescamenti pjerj l'ocasion [sic] delli Ser.™ Principi di Savoia, principia a di 21 April 1608, section 6, Spese Diverse. On procurators in the seventeenth century, see Burke, 1974, pp. 17-19 and 21-3. 105 ASV, RV, busta 222, Spese fatte... nelli refrescamenti p|er] l'ocasion [sic] delli Ser.rai Principi di Savoia, principia a di 21 April 1608, section 6, Spese Diverse. The reasons for the Jewish community's involvement in these events are discussed in Allerston, 1996, pp. 203-8. On the specific sets of sumptuary laws drawn up for the Jewish community in Venice, see Bistort, 1969, pp. 261-4; and David J. Malkiel, A Separate Republic: The Mechanics and Dynamics of Venetian Jewish Self-Government, 1607-1624, Jerusalem, 1991, pp. 220-33. 106 The amount paid to the person who invited them is listed in ASV, RV, busta 222, Spese fatte... nelli refrescamenti p[er] l'ocasion [sic] delli Ser.mi Principi di Savoia, principia a di 21 April 1608, section 6, Spese Diverse. The 'official function' which women fulfilled at these events is also highlighted by Casini, 1996, p. 297, and Fortini Brown, 2004, p. 153. 107 For the more usual interpretation of the relationship between the so-called myth of Venice and Venetian public ceremonial, see Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, Princeton, 1981; and MacKenney, 1987, pp. 133-49 (which also discusses the important role played the craft guilds on these occasions). Cf. Currie's essay in this volume (chapter 7) which shows that conspicuous consumption on the part of courtiers could also benefit a princely state. 108 On the issue of costs, see Casini, 1996, p. 295. An idea of the increasing costs of public ceremonial can be had from the amounts spent on a meal held after the Venetian boat race to the Lido held four times a year. Whereas 15 ducats were allocated for this purpose in 1535, by 1615 the amount then spent, 30 ducats, was considered inadequate, and it was raised to 70. In 1633, at the behest of the officials involved, the sum was raised again to 120 ducats. See ASV, RV, busta 3, fol. 157v, 20 September 1535; Ibid., busta 1, fol. 138, 3 June 1615, and fol. 151, 20 July 1633. 109 On private citizens' use of others' property for festive occasions, see Allerston, 1998, PP. 37-8, 40. 110 This contradiction was highlighted by Muir, 1979, p. 33. HI On the opportunities which these events offered to private citizens to make a public appearance, see Casini, 1996, p. 296. 112 The 'important role played by the concept of space' in official welcomes, and its relationship with political power, are, for example, emphasized in ibid., pp. 288-9, m relation to public places and the city's boundaries. 144
113 On the French king's visit to Venice and the Foscari's involvement, see Nicolas Ivanoff, 'Henri 111 a Venise', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, American edn, 6th ser., 80 (1972), pp. 316, 318, 325. The hospitality extended to Sforza in Florence is noted by Lauro Martines in April Blood: Florence and the Plot against the Medici, Oxford, 2003, pp. 89, 107. On the notion of a palace as the embodiment of the family that inhabited it, see Lindow, 2004, chapter 2; and Fortini Brown, 2004, pp. 24-6 (special attention is also devoted to Ca' Foscari on pp. 26-8). 114 On the use of family insignia on household property in Venice, see Fortini Brown, 2004, pp. 13-15, and Marta Ajmar and Flora Dennis, eds, At Home in Renaissance Italy, London, 2006, pp. 112, 116. On the incorporation of insignia in furnishing tapestries, see Wim Mertens, "'Van Spallieren, Sittecussens en Tappyte Stoelen": The Steady Rise in the Use of Tapestry as an Established Upholstery Textile in Seventeenth-Century Western Europe', in Ijdel Stof: Interieurtextiel in West-Europa 1600-1900, exhibition catalogue, Antwerp, 2001, pp. 291-2. A good example in lace is illustrated in Doretta Davanzo Poli, II merlello veneziano, Novara, 1998, pp. 12-13. 115 See, for example, on Henry Ill's visit: M. della Croce, L'Historia della Publica et Famosa Entrata in Vinegia del Serenissimo Henrico III Re di Franciat.et Polonia, con la Descrittione Particolare della Pompa, e del Numero, & Varieta delli Breganlini, Palaschermi, & Altri Vasselli Armati, con la Dechiaratione dell'Edificio, <ยง Arcofatto al Lido, Venice, 1574; R. Benedetti, Le Feste et Trionfi Fatti dalla Sereniss[imaj Signoria di Venetia nella Felice Venuta di Henrico III Christianiss[imol Re di Francia et di Polonia, Venice, 1574; V. Donaio, Le Feste et Trionfi Fatti nella Nobilissima Cilia di Padoa nella Feliciss[ima] Venuta, et Passaggio di Henrico III Christianissimo Re di Francia, & Pollonia, Padua and Venice, 1574. A useful discussion of this type of pamphlet literature is included in Letizia Pierozzi, 'La vittoria di Lepanto nella vita veneziana di quegli anni (1571-1573)', Ph.D. dissertation, European University Institute, Florence, 1992, pp. 294-345. 116 Marin Sanuto, I diarii, ed. Rinaldofulin et al., 58 vols, Venice, 1879-1903, LII, coll. 513-14, 24 January 1530. 117 Ibid., XXIX, coll. 546-7. 118 Muir, 1979, pp. 38-9. The Ortolani had just accepted the prince as one of their members. On the role of these companies, including the Ortolani, in such events, see also Lionello Venturi, Le compagnie della calza (sec. XV-XVI), Venice, 1983 (orig. pub. 1908-09), pp. 58-9; and Casini, 1996, pp. 298-304. 119 ASV, Senato, Terra, registro 36, fol. 74v [2nd pagination]. On this law see Allerston, 1998, p. 31. 120 The practice of gilding food, which was legislated against from 1473, is noted by Bistort, 1969, p. 207. This particular banquet is cited ibid., p. 209. 121 Sanuto, I diarii, 1879-1903, XXIX, coll. 546-7: 'In questo zorno, la sera, a San Anzolo sul Canal grando, in cha' Lando di sier Marco Antonio Venier signor di Sanguane mio nepote, fu fato una festa et cena honoratissima ...'. On banquets as occasions for demonstrating one's wealth, see Fasoli, 1993, p. 134. 122 On this, specifically in relation to the compagnie della calza, see Venturi, 1983, pp. 59, 63. Venturi also argued in these pages that an increasing intolerance of ostentatious display, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, affected the activities of these festive companies. 123 My fellow contributor to this volume, Luca Mola, has attributed the creation of Venetian sumptuary legislation to economic and moral motivations rather than socio-political ones; see Mola, 2003, pp. 49-51. 124 The conference was held in Florence in 2000. John Brewer was invited to make a formal commentary on the last day, but unlike the contributions of Richard Goldthwaite and Dennis Romano, his contribution was not included in the final publication: Marcellofantoni, Louisa C. Matthew and Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, eds, The Art Market in Italy, 15th-17th Centuries/ll mercato dell'arte in Italia, secc. XV-XVII, Moderna, 2003. 125 See Strocchia, 1992; Syson and Thornton, 2001. A good example of this recent trend in consumption studies is Joy Parr, Domestic Goods: The Material, the Moral, and the Economic in the Postwar Years, Toronto, 1999, especially pp. 167-71. 126 See Strocchia, 1992, p. 32. 127 On such bequests of goods, see Patricia Allerston, 'Reconstructing the Second-Hand Clothes Trade in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Venice', Costume, 33 (1999), pp. 51-2; and for an example of a nobleman's carpet stolen from a church during a religious festival, and thought to be resold or pledged in the Ghetto, see ASV, Ufficiali al Cattaver, busta 244, registro 5, fol. 91v, 9 September 1593. 128 ASV, Notarile, Testamenti, Atti Cigrini, busta 199, no. 319, Zuane Strazzaruol, 17 November 1579: 'di far vender tutto il mio al'incanto, et pagar li legati...'. On the Venetian Capuchins' reluctance to accept control of
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Palladio's expensive new building, II Redentore, which was being built as Zuane wrote his will, see Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice, rev. and enlarged edn, New Haven, 2002. 129 Cf. Jardine, 1996, pp. 8-9, 15. 130 See also Parr, 1999, pp. 168-9, on the need for historians 'to resist overstating consumption as a sphere of liberty and self-expression'. 131 See ibid., p. 268, on the notion of consumption patterns resulting from 'a complex arbitration among the political, moral and household economies from which the entitlement to spend results'.
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READING 4
Patricia Fortini-Brown Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites Perhaps more than any other city, Venice was built on worldly goods. The shops along the Merceria, the street running from Rialto to San Marco, and the palaces along the Grand Canal overflowed with items transported from abroad or hammered and chiseled by local artisans at home. But what did this profusion of goods mean? In this chapter Patricia Fortini Brown shows how both patricians and cittadini used these objects to define their individual and familial identities and to map out a place for themselves in Venetian society. Yet the impulse of these elites to distinguish themselves through a display of material wealth threatened the mercantile virtues of prudence and frugality as well as the solidarity of a ruling class based first and foremost on hereditary right. The result was a long and generally unsuccessful campaign of sumptuary legislation. Brown argues that in Venice these laws served a unique purpose. They were not used, as they were elsewhere, to validate the social system and to distinguish one class from another. Instead, the Venetian government promulgated them both to maintain solidarity within the ranks of the patriciate and to narrow the gap between nobles and wealthy commoners. In Venice every effort was made to ensure that private wealth would not be used to destroy public life. Recent studies suggest that the consumption of luxury goods was a defining feature of a distinct Renaissance culture, as important as the rediscovery of the art and literature of classical antiquity in making a break from the world of medieval feudalism.1 W hile the relative importance of the library vis-Ă -vis the marketplace is a matter of debate, one cannot deny that the golden age of Venice and other major European cities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was golden indeed in terms of objects as well as ideas.2 Indeed, Venice, perhaps more than any other city, played a central role in the nascent consumer culture described so
147
well by Richard Goldthwaite and Lisa Jardine. As Padre Pietro Casola observed on a visit in 1494: Something may be said about the quantity of merchandise in the said city, although not nearly the whole truth, because it is inestimable. Indeed it seems as if the whole world flocks there, and that human beings have concentrated there all their force for trading. I was taken to see various warehouses, beginning with that of the Germans—which it appears to me would suffice alone to supply all Italy with the goods that come and go—and so many others that it can be said they are innumerable. . . . And who could count the many shops so well furnished that they also seem warehouses, with so many cloths of every make tapestry, brocades and hangings of every design, carpets of every sort, camlets of every colour and texture, silks of every kind; and so many warehouses full of spices, groceries and drugs, and so much beautiful white wax! These things stupefy the beholder, and cannot be fully described to those who have not seen them.3 Given that Venice was unique in so many aspects— its site, its government, its social structure— it may be asked whether its use of, and experience with, this expanded world of beautiful objects was also distinctive. Any such query may well begin in the private spaces of Venetian palaces, and a short tour behind the walls with the Venetian writer Francesco Sansovino in 1581 will serve to define the issues. Son of the renowned sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino, he had a good eye and a voluble pen. Observing that Venetians referred to their homes as houses (case) instead of palazzi “out of modesty, he continued: In the past, although our ancestors were frugal, they were lavish in the decoration of their houses. There are countless buildings with ceilings of bedrooms [camere] and other rooms decorated in gold and other colors and with histories painted by celebrated artists. Almost everyone has his house adorned with noble tapestries, silk drapes and gilded leather, wall hangings [spalliere] and other things according to the time and season, and most of the bedrooms are furnished with bedsteads and chests, gilded and painted, so the cornices are loaded with gold. The dressers displaying silverware, porcelain, pewter and brass or damascene bronze are innumerable. In the reception rooms [sale] of great families there are racks of arms with the shields and standards of their ancestors who fought for Venice on land and at sea. I have seen sold at auction the home furnishings of a noble condemned by unfortunate incident that would have been more than a Grand Duke of Italy would wish. The same can be said of the middle and lower classes in proportion. Because there is no person so miserable, with a well- equipped house [casa aperta],' that he would not have 148
chests and bedsteads of walnut, green draperies, carpets, pewter, copper, chains of gold, forks and rings of silver. Such is the politia of this city. Therefore, practicing admirably the exercise of the arts and converging there all the foreign nations, the people participate in this profit sofertile, some more, some less, according to the quality and ingenuity of the persons, [but] made thereby too soft and licentious.5 Sansovino’s choice of the word politia was probably no accident. The term had two distinct, if related, meanings in the sixteenth century. One usage derived from the Greek politeia and connoted good government, the political life, and civil comportment.6 The other came from the Latin politus, meaning refinement in fashion, politeness of behavior, or the display of luxury.7 Here Sansovino was referring to the manners and material goods that added up to an urbane lifestyle of civility and refinement. He attributes the opulence of the Venetian home to the city’s long history without invasion or pillage and to mercantile activities that brought in goods from throughout the world. But for all his celebration of its material splendor, he introduces an ambiguous, if not discordant, tone on two points. First, his Venetian forefathers were both frugal and profligate. And second, while his contemporaries profited from a thriving culture of consumption and display, at least some had become overly addicted to a life of self-indulgence. They were, in short, a frugal people caught up in a sumptuous lifestyle about which he seemingly had mixed feelings. Thomas Coryat, an Englishman who visited the city in 1608, also sensed ambiguities in Venetian society, but from the perspective of an outsider. He allowed that “the name of a Gentleman of Venice is esteemed a title of . . . eminent dignity and honour,” and yet his view of the household arrangements of the Venetians was ambivalent. He asks: “Howbeit these Gentlemen do not maintaine and support the title of their gentility with a quarter of that noble state and magnificence as our English Noblemen and Gentlemen of the better sort doe. For they keepe no honourable hospitality, nor gallant retinue of servants about them, but a very frugali table, though they inhabit the most beautiful Palaces, and are inriched with as ample meanses to keepe a brave port as some of our greatest English Earles.”8 Indeed, as a recent study has shown, the typical patrician family in Venice employed few servants in comparison with their counterparts of the same social rank elsewhere.9 Such restraint was due, Coryat learned, to “a certain 149
kinde of edect made by the Senate, that they should not keepe a retinue beyond their limitation.â&#x20AC;?10 Indeed, that anomalous image of frugality amidst material splendor sums up the dilemma of a society in transition. By the middle of the Cinquecento. concordia and unanimitas, the ethical linchpins of the longstanding Venetian myth of equality and consensus within the patriciate, were under increasing strain.11 For an ever more transparent myth was called upon to mask ever greater disparities and concentrations of wealth within that same patriciate, as well as disjunctions between economic class and social caste within the society as a whole.12 At issue was the public control of private politia in a society that privileged civic responsibility over individual or family glory. As a first step toward a better understanding of Venetian attitudes toward worldly goods in terms of personal and public identities, this chapter focuses on three questions. First, how did the Venetian experience relate to ideas about nobility that were being debated throughout Italy during this period? Second, how did the domestic environment in Venice express patrician ideals, or, to put it another way, how did the individual define and defend family identity through the accumulation of objects and works of art? And third, how did Venetian society deal with the tension between private aspirations and the need for communal solidarity that was engendered by those modestly named but sumptuously adorned case that not only lined the Grand Canal but were scattered through every sestiere of the city? The debate on nobility was not new. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century jurists and humanists in Tuscany, from Bartolo di Sassoferrato to Poggio Bracciolini, had struggled to define the relative importance of blood, virtĂš (i.e., fame, glory, virtue), and wealth in defining nobility in communes where a new mercantile oligarchy had gained power at the expense of an ancient military-feudal aristocracy. During the same period in Venice, where nobility had essentially been determined by bloodlines since the Serrata of 1297, writers were more concerned with the relationship between noble privilege and the sovereignty of the state (i.e., the Venetian senate). But during the first three decades of the sixteenth century, when class lines were becoming more strictly drawn and power was more narrowly held in states throughout the peninsula, an old debate took on new resonance. The 150
presence of foreign armies in Italy, moreover, prompted comparisons "with institutions and customs of other nations.13 A growing body of literature, much of it published in Venice, began to grapple with changing definitions of nobility. Niccolò Machiavelli, in his Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, probably written in 1513-17, sought to distinguish between gentilhuomini and cittadini. No admirer of nobility, he held that the caste was made up of gentiluomini, “who without working live in luxury on the returns from their landed possessions, without paying any attention either to agriculture or to any other occupation necessary for making a living.” Such men, he charged, were altogether hostile to all free government.”14 It was in fact the cittadini who created civility and the civil life. But how did Machiavelli account for Venice, which “ranked high among modern republics” elsewhere in his treatise15 but was ruled by noble gentlemen? Indeed, in his view they were not gentlemen at all: “The gentlemen in that republic are so rather in name than in fact; they do not have great incomes from landed possessions, but their great riches are based on trade and movable property; moreover none of them holds cashes or has any jurisdiction over men. Thus that name of gentleman among them is a name of dignity and reputation, without being founded on any of those things in other cities signified by the word gentleman. . . . so Venice is divided into gentlemen [among whom there were no distinctions] and people; and the rule is that the first shall hold or be eligible to hold all the offices; the others are wholly excluded from them.”16 Since Machiavelli was concerned only with political power, he did not take account of cittadini originari, but his view was accurate enough for the early sixteenth century, when most of the patriciate were still actively engaged in trade. And yet by the late 1520s, when Gasparo Contarini composed his De magistratibus et republica Venetorum, the treatise was beginning to seem out of date.17 The 1599 English translation of the treatise by Lewes Lewkenor captures the unabashed certainty of a privileged elite and will be used here. Observing that all political authority was vested in the Great Council, made up of a company of citizens [by which he meant the patriciate], Contarini explained: “Now first I am to yeeld you a reckoning how and with what wisedome it was ordayned by our auncestors, that the common people should not bee admitted into this company of 151
citizens, in whose authority consisteth the whole power of the common wealth, then that this definition of citizens was not with lesse wisedome measured, rather by the nobility of lineage, then the greatnes of wealth, as in auncient commonwealthes it was wont, & as many old philosophers do prescribe.”18 Contarini allowed that some of the founding fathers had argued that this “company of citizens” should be defined by ability and abundance of riches but argued that this was totally wrongheaded: “For it happeneth often that those of the basest sort, yea of the very skum of the people, do scrape together great wealth, as those that apply themselves to filthy artes, and illiberal occupations, never sparing the toilesome and carefull wearing out of their fives, but with an intollerable saving, defrauding themselves of the comforts of life, thereby to increase their substance.” Conversely, the well brought up honest citizens (i.e., patricians) often fell into poverty either through adverse fortune or through spending their time on liberal studies rather than on increasing their wealth. In consequence, if “filthy and ill mannerd men favouring of nothing but gaine, utterly ignorant of good artes” came to govern, disaster would ensue. “Therefore our wise and prudent ancestors, lest their commonwealth should happen into these calamities, ordered that this definition of publike rule, should go rather by the nobility of lineage, than by the estimation of wealth.”19 Contarmi would have been writing shortly after the passage of the landmark law of 1526 requiring registration of all noble marriages. Preceded by similar legislation in 1506 that called for the registration of all male noble births, it was the culmination of a series of laws passed over the past century designed to ensure the purity of noble blood.20 The hard edge on Contarini’s words suggests that resentment of wealthy commoners among the poorer members of the patriciate must be held in check by stressing the membership of the latter in a community of noble equals who shared political privilege. His scheme thus far sounds much like Machiavelli’s. But then he goes on to describe a political hierarchy within the citizen class of nobles. Aside from the doge, who “beareth the shew of a kingly power, representing in all thinges the glory, gravitie and dignity of a king,” there was also a special group of officeholders who were elevated above their peers: “But the Senate, the tenne, the 152
colledge of elders or chiefe counsellors, which amongst us of the common people are commonly called the sages: those I say which do consult of matters, & after from the commonwealth do make report unto the Senat, carry with them a certaine shew of an Aristocracy or government of the nobilitie.”21 Contarini’s stratified patriciate, with some nobles more equal than others, reflected a political reality. But he chose to overlook another reality, namely, that wealth and power often went hand in hand, an inconvenient fact that would become increasingly divisive as the century went on. The mercantile nobility of Venice was an anomaly often remarked upon by writers of the period. Giovambattista Nenna of Bari, who published a treatise on nobility in 1543, was struck by the diverse ways in which nobility was defined in different communities: “We see in the magnanimous and signorial city of Naples that the practice of trade— mercadantia— is alien to the noble caste.” There, as in ancient Thebes, he observed, merchants were not allowed to hold public office. In Venice, however, “it is completely contrary: since not only plebes, but [also] nobles, including their senators, are engaged in trade. The purity of the blood of their ancestors is what distinguishes noble from non-noble, not their profession.”22 Tommaso Garzoni expanded upon the same theme four decades later in his La piazza universale. Again looking at the Neapolitan barons, he wrote that “they constitute nobility in riding a beautiful gianetto [a Spanish horse], in jousting, in living a gallant life, in being escorted by a flock of pages, and in the exterior pomp of a beautiful and graceful company.” He further observed that the Milanese lords were little different, if less affected. But “the noble Venetians are completely contrary in mood to these; because they go alone, with simple clothing, however finely dressed, they keep a single gondola in the cavana that is their stall, and they exercise mercantia [trade], however grand, which was not esteemed by the ancient Roman senators in any pact.”23 The contrast is clear in two woodcuts from Cesare Vecellio’s costume book of 1590, where an elegantly accoutered Neapolitan nobleman may be compared with his soberly, if imposingly, dressed Venetian counterpart (Figs. 1 and 2). Along with noble occupations, the relationship between nobility and wealth was also a major concern. Aristotle’s theory of magnificence, which sanctioned, indeed 153
required, great expenditures and appropriate display by the wealthy, had been part of the aristocratic rationale in Italy since the fifteenth century.24 But in Venice the greater dilemma concerned not the noble rich but the noble poor. Accordingly, Girolamo Muzio in his treatise of 1565 sought to define who could truly be called a gentleman. He allowed that people were accustomed to honoring rich men who wore the most splendid dress, kept the most servants, and owned the most beautiful houses and the finest horses. But he held that not every rich man was noble and that in fact the most noble of men disdained riches, pleasure, and glory and might well not be rich. Such was often the case, he wrote, in Venice, where there was no one from a noble family so poor that he could not participate in the councils and hold political office. But Muzio admitted that Venice constituted a “miracolo.”25 And yet, the famed solidarity of the Venetian patriciate was becoming less a miracle and more a mirage. With great wealth concentrated in ever fewer hands within the patriciate and even among wealthy commoners, a growing number of nobles lived in relative poverty.26 Contarini’s acclaim for rule “rather by the nobility of lineage, than by the estimation of wealth” was fine in theory but little comfort in real life. The Venetian patrician Paolo Paruta addressed the problem of how much wealth a nobleman needed in his treatise Della perfettione della vita politica, published in 1579. Rejecting proposals by several of the protagonists in his dialogue to pass laws limiting wealth, he suggested that honors and offices of the city be distributed harmoniously among the patriciate, equaling “according to a certain geometric proportion the diverse condition of persons.”27 But the overriding concern of the ever larger poor majority of the nobility was not simply office-holding or even hunger. At issue was personal identity, for riches were necessary if one was to live in a noble manner. As Antonio Colluraffi later wrote in his Il nobile veneto, “It is not enough then for our noble to say: I am born Nobile; but he should also say: I want to live Nobile; I want to die Nobile.”28 And the manner of living nobile was supported by its own literature in the sixteenth century.29 The point of departure was Alessandro Piccolomini’s translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, a fourth-century treatise on the art of governing the home, published in Venice in 1540.30 Two years later, Piccolomini 154
brought out his own treatise entitled Della institutione de la felice vita dell’huomo nato nobile e in città libera [The principles of the happy life of the man born noble and in a free city] .31 Similar works followed by other writers, who depended on Aristotle as well as Xenophon. The central premise was that the house, as the most tangible symbol of family identity and continuity, should balance commodità (comfort and utility) with decoro (honor) within its fabrica (structure). Its dimensions, its floor plan, its decorations, and its furnishings were eloquent signs of the family’s status and quality of life. Although each writer had his own emphasis— some were oriented more toward rural than toward city life— they all presented principles and norms that were shared by the new aristocratic elite that had taken hold in most of the old citizen- republics of Italy.32 Several of the treatise writers insisted that every family should own its own home. Those who lived in the houses of others, wrote Nicolò Vito di Gozze, a gentleman of Ragusa, were “imperfectly economico” because just as it was necessary to have one’s own sons and one’s own wife, it was also necessary to have one’s own house. 33 Giacomo Lanteri, a Brescian nobleman, stressed that “he who is born noble and rich should not in any way (if great necessity does not force him to) make himself a slave to the price of one hundred scudi a year.”34 And yet here again Venetians went their own way, for a number of patrician families— about 50 percent by 1582— rented palaces from others.35 Their livelihoods long connected to trade rather than to the land, some did this in order to keep their capital liquid for investment rather than because they could not afford to purchase or build a house. Others were forced to rent by virtue of inheritance laws.36 But if the palace was a major factor in family identity, was it less so if the family simply lived there and did not own it? The problem is worth further investigation, but one suspects that in such cases the family image was projected in the mobili (material goods), for which the palace provided a dignified and essential frame. A second area of discussion in the treatises was the proper site and orientation of the house. The possibilities were limited in crowded Venice. The Venetian writer Giovanni Maria Memmo urged that, if possible, it “should not be dominated by other palaces in order that they not impede air and the sunlight, and that it should not be subject to the view of neighbors so that the domestic activities could be 155
seen and observed by them. I judge that this is one of the major drawbacks that a palace could have, being in such a way the servant of others.”37 But as Palladio observed, “Most commonly in cities, either the neighbours’ walls, the streets, or publick places, prescribed certain limits, which the architect cannot surpass.”38 Aside from the difficulty of finding an ideal location in Venice, there was also a greater dispersal of noble homes throughout the city than Lanteri might have sanctioned. For he had counseled that it was not good for noblemen to five on public streets and squares where there are botteghe (shops) of artisans because of the noise and lack of space. O n the other hand, he had advised the merchant to locate his residence in the part of the city most convenient to his business.,and even to rent ground-floor rooms to others as botteghe or fondachi (warehouses or stores).39 For Venice’s mercantile nobility the demands of honor and utility might well be balanced between a magnificent facade facing the Grand Canal and a less imposing ground entrance amidst shops and small artisan establishments. W ithin the house, principles of separation and specialization pertained, the size of each room being appropriate to its function. Lanteri held that rooms for everyday family use should be kept separate from those used by guests, and servants’ rooms should be “in the most abject part of the house so that they will be hidden from the view of those w ho enter.” While the father’s chamber and study should be closest to the entrance, the women’s rooms should be the furthest from it, connected to the garden and the places of washing and storage so that the women could go freely from one place to the other “without passing through the rest of the house, where they can be seen.” Allowing that nobles and grandi of the highest rank are “more than all the others obligated to display grandeur and pomp,” Lanteri advised that the same principles held true for all homes.40 The plan thus controlled access and ordered traffic, with degrees of separation between public and private areas.41 In Venice and elsewhere in Renaissance Italy, camere (bedchambers) were quasipublic rooms, used not only for childbirth celebrations but also for marriage banquets.42 A lithograph made after an 1830 drawing by the English artist Lake Price of just such a chamber in the Palazzo Corner-Spinelli, which still had much of its sixteenth-century decoration, gives us a sense of these multipurpose spaces 156
(Fig. 3). The bed, built into an alcove, was characteristically Venetian. Padre Casola must have seen something like it in 1494, when he attended a lying-in celebration for a lady of the Dolfin family and described a well-accoutered bedstead “fixed in the room in the Venetian fashion.”43 However, a dialogue in Anton Francesco Doni’s Ragionamenti, published in Venice in 1552, suggests either a change or a disagreement over the custom of the commodious bedchamber. Representing the traditional view, a certain Nanni Unghero complains of a modern floor plan: “Those camerine so small that there is room only for a bed, a table, and two chests cannot be praised; and then to make a sala that seems to be a piazza!” But Betto Arrighi responds: “The camere are made for sleeping and not for passing through, nor for banqueting in, nor for dancing; however, they are sufficient. The sala is righdy so [large] because all the family comes together there all at once. .. . The ladies stand beneath the windows because of the light, to embroider and make fine things with the needle, . . . [the family] eats on the table at the head [of the room] and plays [games] on the one at the side. Some stroll around, others stand at the fire, and so there is a place for everyone.”44 Doni illustrated this point with a woodcut of a Venetian matron absorbed in her needlework next to a large window (Fig. 4). Addressing the matter from a Venetian perspective, Memmo emphasized two features that are not so prominent in the other treatises. First, he called for a spacious loggia and a reception room— the sala or portego that was cheerful and full of air because these were “the life and spirit of the palace, where the Citizen lives the greater part of his life.”45 Indeed, the portego, the most public room in the Venetian house, was also a defining space for the family who lived in it. The loggia gave visual access to the public world beyond the walls, and, conversely, denoted on the exterior facade of the house the heart of domestic space. In the luminous interior a family, surrounded by portraits and paintings of secular and religious subjects, presented itself as a cohesive unit to those who were invited inside die palace walls. The bedchambers may have contained more of the material wealth of the house and undoubtedly were the site of more of the day-today activity, but it was in the portego that families or individuals represented themselves in a formal way.44 While the range of furnishings listed in porteghi in 157
sixteenth-century inventories is great, they typically held works of art, a few large pieces of furniture, and a generous number of chairs or benches, ensembles well suited for the entertainment of many guests. Well before Sansovino celebrated the politia of the Venetian house, many families already lived in luxurious surroundings that the writer would have considered suitable for a casa aperta. In the fourteenth century Lionardo di Niccolò Frescobaldi, a Florentine pilgrim on the way to the Holy Land who spent several days in Venice, described a dinner at the home of Remigio Soranzo, which “appeared to be a house of gold.”47 Likewise, at the end of the fifteenth century Padre Casola saw a fireplace of Carrara marble in the Dolfin bedchamber and “so much gold everywhere” that he was certain that its decoration would have cost 2,000 ducats or more. It should also be noted that he left the reception hungry and commented on the same penurious hospitality that Coryat would criticize a century later.48 But such reports, like those of Marino Sanudo and Sansovino, are hearsay. To get beyond them into all the rooms of a variety of Venetian homes, one must inevitably look to inventories. Drawn up by notaries, inventories listed all the objects (no matter how modest) in a house, in most cases room by room; they offer invaluable and reliable evidence of a material culture that is truly sumptuous at the high end and depressing indeed at the low. Such documentation provides a check on the ideal prescriptions of the treatises on the household and the reports of dazzled eyewitnesses such as Casola. But it is important to be aware of the limitations of inventories. They do not describe the immovable decoration of rooms, such as marble fireplaces, elaborately carved doors, and gold and ultramarine coffered ceilings. N or was every household inventoried. Most often inventories were made upon the death of an individual with children of minor age or for a widow who was reclaiming her dowry.49 And yet precisely because of the random nature of inventories that survive, embracing both lengthy catalogues of affluent houses and poignantly meager lists of the poor, they appear to offer a reasonably representative cross section of the levels of wealth in Venetian society. Several inventories were published by Pompeo Molmenti in his ground-breaking study La storia di Venezia nella vita privata, first published in 1880 and expanded 158
to three volumes in six subsequent editions.50 But Isabella Palumbo-Fossati, writing in the 1980s, was, to my knowledge, the first scholar to look at them analytically.51 Focusing primarily on the homes of artisans and artists, she documented a level of comfort that amply confirms Sansovino’s claims for the availability of a lifestyle of politia even for “the middle and lower classes in proportion.” To get a sense of the domestic environments of the most privileged in terms of wealth and noble status, we will turn to the inventory of the patrician Domenico di Nicolò Capello, who died in 1532, leaving a widow and at least one minor child. During his life Capello moved among the grandi. Elected capo of the Council of Ten “per danari,” as Sanudo put it, he was active in political life.52 At the time of his death Capello had about 2,500 ducats in cash in his palace on the R io di San Lorenzo in the parish of Santa Maria Formosa. Later praised by Sansovino as one of the hundred residences in the city worthy of the, name palazzo, it was a traditional gothic-style structure with a frescoed facade that featured no less than three rooms denoted in the inventory as “golden.”53 Among the furnishings of the camera d’oro grande were four paintings: a Madonna with Saints Peter and John in a frame with gilded colonettes and painted images of Prudence, Temperance, and Justice, those secular patron saints of the Venetian household, each in its own gilt frame.54 The room also held ten painted and gilded chests, a large gilded writing desk of walnut, and a mirror with a gilt frame. Likewise, the camera d’oro piccolo featured a black walnut writing desk, seven painted and gilded chests, a large mirror of tin with a walnut frame, a gilded restello (dressing mirror), and two paintings, a Madonna with Saints Nicholas and Anthony and the Madonna alone. Even the walls of the mezado d’oro were decorated with a mirror and paintings of the Madonna and a head of Christ.55 The portego was intended for aristocratic gatherings such as the dinner Domenico gave for nine gentlemen in 1530. According to Sanudo, it was “molto brava” and the talk of the city. For the variety of game that was served, “one could call it an ark of Noah.”56 Sanudo does not record the locale of the dinner, but if the guests had eaten in the portego, they would have been surrounded by eight paintings, six of which depicted religious subjects: “a large painting on canvas of Mary, Joseph, 159
and the shepherds [probably a Nativity or possibly a Flight into Egypt], a Last Supper, an Assumption of the Virgin, a Prodigal Son, a Crucifixion,” and “uno dela adultera,” probably Christ and the Adulteress. The two secular paintings were an Ages of Man and a portrait of Dom enico’s son Nicolò, then deceased. The room also contained a large wood chest, a small square bench of walnut, six dining tables on trestles, including one of cypress wood, and fifteen painted benches “around the portego.”57 Although the inventories document a proliferation of wall paintings in Venetian porteghi over the course of the sixteenth century, some patrician walls remained relatively bare. The inventory made after the death of Donado di Michael da Lezze in 1582 is a case in point. W hile the wealth of objects attests to his affluence, his portego featured only three paintings, two of them portraits of Donado himself and his grandfather. And yet the room was clearly set up for large gatherings: twenty-four walnut benches, some decorated and some plain, twentytwo chairs, two tables (one fir and the other a small round one of walnut “to work on”), a campaign chest covered with horse skin, a credenza of walnut, five chests of various types, a copper bucket, and three stools.58 The nobleman Cipriano di Nicolò Boldù, by contrast, exemplified penury more than restrained opulence. At the time of his death in 1572 his portego held only nine walnut chairs (six new and three old), a walnut credenza, a painted chest to hold dirty clothing, a homo di legno,59 a trestle table, and an old chest containing some writings.60 By the early seventeenth century the portego walls of wealthy families had begun to spill over with paintings.61 For example, an inventory of 1604 listing the possessions of Francesco Vrins, a Flemish merchant who lived in the parish of Santa Maria Formosa, cited no fewer than twenty-two. Among them were nine portraits; four of these were of named family members, including two of the deceased. There were also six landscapes, two kitchen scenes, a Judgment of Paris, a painting with five large figures, and three small pictures above the doors. The only piece of religious art in the room was “a Christ with the martyrdom of the column,” presumably a sculpted figure of the Flagellation. A large framed mappamondo also hung on the wall.62 Maps of the world or of continents, artifacts of an age of exploration and discovery of varying degrees of scientific 160
accuracy, were already a popular form of decoration in the north. Although rare in Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century— Marino Sanudo had one that was much admired— they appeared increasingly in Venetian inventories and by the seventeenth century were ubiquitous emblems of wealth and good taste. While Vrins may well have consulted his map in the course of his mercantile pursuits, in many— perhaps most— Venetian patrician homes in this period large wall maps would have been status symbols whose purpose was more ornamental than functional. Less actively engaged by this time in mercantile activities that required an accurate knowledge of the world, the patriciate had become “gentlemen in fact” as well as in name.63 Vrins’s portego also held a credenza, a harpsichord, a mirror with an ebony frame, a large gilded lantern, two tables (one surfaced with red leather, the other having drawers), nineteen chairs, and twenty stools or benches.64 In his drawing of the portego in Palazzo Barbarigo, Lake Price attempted to reconstruct the original appearance of such a room in the sixteenth century, complete, in this case, with the lordly figure of Titian at the easel (Fig. 5). Gardens, the second feature recommended by Memmo of particular relevance to Venetian householders, were also a particular sign of wealth in a city where there was little room for kitchen gardens. He counseled: Try to have a large and spacious courtyard and a beautiful garden adorned with various and delicate fruits, herbs, and flowers of many kinds, qualities, and fragrances because for the citizen who spends a good part of his life in the palace such things will be of no small enjoyment and recreation, and he will be especially delighted in agriculture so located, appreciated, and used by the ancient sages: the garden, the loggia, and the courtyard will take away a great part of the worries and boredom that are part of human affairs. And delighting in the study of good literature, [the citizen] will find infinite recreation each time that, tired from study, he enters the garden and with a little knife in his hand will choose some fragrant and delicate flower; he will capture a salad leaf in his own hand, he will pick a mature fruit; and enjoying such a pastime and recreation, he will create the highest and divine concepts, with which he will then fill learned and honored pages upon returning to his study.65 Although Venetian courtyards are now often barren of vegetation, many must have looked like that of Palazzo Salviati at San Polo in a Lake Price drawing (Fig. 161
6). Beyond that, the taste for bringing the garden inside the house is evident in the large number of spalliere a verdure listed in the inventories, such as those decorating the throne room and St. Ursula’s bedchamber in Carpaccio’s Reception of the Ambassadors, a painting in his cycle of the Life of Saint Ursula (Fig. 7). These are tapestries woven with a vegetal or millefleur design that were hung like a wainscoting around the lower part of the walls. The wealthy cittadino merchant Nicolò Duodo, for example, had sixteen nutwood chests in the camera grande facing the garden in his palace at San Marziale. These were filled with spalliere, mostly a verdure, in pieces that were about 4 feet high and in lengths that ranged from 6 to 24 feet. Altogether, they added up to 222 running feet, enough to adorn the walls of a fair-sized room several times over.66 Domenico Capello’s inventory listed both antiporte (door curtains) and spalliere a verdure, as well as spalliere a verdure con paesi, probably tapestries with pastoral or rustic scenes.67 Memmo also advises, betraying an attitude that seems particularly Venetian, that “beyond the obvious and open entrances, [the house] should have some secret doors where one can enter and exit without being seen by anyone.”68 Indeed, the palace took on a metaphorical function, with its arrangement expressing the attitudes and hierarchy of values of the inhabitants and activities that it housed.69 Palladio compared the house to the human body, which has noble and beautiful parts but also ugly and ignoble but necessary parts, which are best kept hidden. In the house too the most beautiful parts should be placed in areas of greatest visibility, where they can be seen immediately, whereas the less beautiful places should be hidden away.70 Another theme that emerges from the treatises, and one that is closely related to the ideals of separation and specialization, is that of the primacy of order. Each thing in the house, whether it was a basket of fruit or a sack of grain, a kitchen implement, a tablecloth, or a bed, had its proper location. Piccolomini, who was particularly eloquent on this matter, wrote: “And the clothing of each has to have a different place— one place for the children’s, another for the husband’s, and finally another for that of his consort. As to [the wife’s] ornaments, one place is appropriate for her dresses, another for a ring, or jewel, or necklace, or bracelet, or similar expensive things, which should be kept in the most secret place in the lady’s 162
bedchamber.” He tells an anecdote to make his point. Asking what locale would be least disposed to be arranged in an orderly way, he points to the barges that transport passengers between Venice and Padua each day and night: “Not so much because they are small but because there is no separate room or compartment where things can be stowed away until they are needed.” And yet he had seen such a barge come to Venice from Ancona loaded with every type of merchandise, and it was in such perfect order that each item could be located immediately.71 The lesson was clear: the beauty of a thing, including the casa, lies in the order and the proportion of its parts. Here, Piccolomini was speaking to the wife. It was her charge to keep the household in good order. The model of the good marriage that comes through in these treatises, while it may well be patriarchal, is one of a partnership. For both husband and wife are held to be necessary to the economica of the household. The husband’s role was to acquire and provide; the wife’s was to conserve. Although we cannot know what order was actually maintained in the Venetian palaces, household inventories document a frame of mind according to which the necessities and the adornments of everyday life were arranged in markedly similar ways in a wide variety of homes, from artisans to patricians’. The number and diversity of containers inside the Venetian home is one of the most striking features of the inventories. The most common storage chest was the cassa, typically made of walnut and less often of fir or cypress, sometimes painted or gilded or both, or carved, or inlaid with intarsia alla certosina, or even painted a marmaro, that is, faux marble.72 In addition, there were the cassoni, the cassele, the cassete, the forzieri, the cofani, the scrigni, the scatole, the ceste, and the cesteliete, a plethora of possibilities whose specificity of function is sometimes difficult to distinguish, designed to ensure the good order of the household.73 The desire to organize is also reflected in the proliferation of furnishings designed for specific purposes. The restello is a case in point. A piece of furniture that was invented in the fifteenth century but had almost disappeared from the inventories by the end of the sixteenth, it typically consisted of a wall mirror set into a wood frame, often richly decorated with painting, gilding, and intaglio, with hooks from which articles for the toilette were hung: hairbrushes, combs, code (horse tail 163
switches to clean combs), scriminali (styluses or needles of bone, glass, or silver for parting the hair), a zebellino (a small fur to hold in the hand), profumego lavorado da pomo colla sua cadenella (a perfume ball on a chain), paternostri (rosaries), spugnette (sponges), bottigliette di profumi (perfume bottles), vasetti di pomette (glass jars of pomade), and the like.74 With such objects, organization became a work of art. Assessing the abundance and wealth of material things that made up the Venetian interior, Palumbo-Fossati noted three constants.75 First, the Renaissance Venetian was surrounded by a broad spectrum of colors and to that we might add textures and stuffsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; that are assiduously recorded in the inventories, now translatable only with guesswork and considerable imprecision. For example, among the abundant furnishings found in the camera grande of the recently deceased procurator Lorenzo Correr in 1584 were three door curtains of crimson wool and another of crimson panno rosso with a cut pattern of green velvet; a turchino (probably turquoise blue) damask bed ensemble with cords of gold; four velvet cushions, two black and two crimson; a coverlet of crimson ormesino (a silk often used for togas) lined with green samito (a heavy luxurious silk) ; three white quilted coverlets, a coverlet of columbine raso (silk satin) lined with yellow cloth; a coverlet of turchino and white rasetti (an extremely fine satin) lined with red cloth; two white bedspreads; and a seat cover of turchino raso with fringes of gold.76 The fluid prose of the notary attests to an eye well practiced in distinguishing not only colors but silk fabrics of various sorts. Second, light was a tangible presence not only from the large windows, loggias, and interior courtyards but also through the types of materials that were common in the Venetian home, emanating from lamps and reflecting off mirrors, bronzes, shining terrazzofloors, and glass objects of every kind. And third, objects of diverse provenance, whether in fact or in inspirationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; painted landscapes alla fiandra, bedcovers alia suriana, mosque carpets alia turchesca and alia cimiscasaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; coexisted. In sum, the Venetian aesthetic taste of the mid-sixteenth century revealed a sensitivity to the decorative possibilities of light, privileging diversity and ingenuity in terms of types of objects, colors, textiles, and provenance.
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Amidst all this splendor, how was specific family identity expressed? Muzio wrote of Venice: “For antiquity of blood there is no city in Italy that has more noble families; both from their order of magistrates and for the memory that they keep of their lineages, one can distinguish nobles from others better here than in any other part.”77 The most direct and visually powerful assertion of the antiquity and social rank of the family, whether cittadino or noble, was the coat of arms, as evidenced most eloquently and comprehensively by the compilations of noble stemme, a new literary genre that flourished in the period.78 As Goldthwaite points out, heraldry was part of the language of medieval chivalry that expanded into the mercantile classes in the early Renaissance. However, the complex rules in use in northern Europe, with dividing and quartering of bloodlines on the coat of arms, were simply ignored in Italy in favor of personally invented insignia and impresa. Display of a stemma was thus no proof of nobility— simply the sign of a certain level of politia as Sansovino would have understood it.79 Outside the palace, the stemma was carved on wellheads and embedded in walls to proclaim and delimit the space of the casa. Inside the walls, it might be embroidered onto a spalliera like those being aired out on the altana (rooftop terrace) in Carpaccio’s Healing of the Possessed M an, or woven into a backrest of padded silk fabric, or carved on a fireplace hood as in Mansueti’s Healing of the Daughter of Ser Nicolò Benvegnudo of San Polo.m The inventory of Domenico Capello was typical: “an hourglass with its colonettes and the Capello arms … a damascene basin with the Capello and Bernardo arms … nine tapestries, that is spalliere, with beautiful figures and five others with the Capello and Bernardo arms.”81 Or the stemma might be tooled on book covers or incised on the handles of cutlery, bronze bells (Fig. 8), the covers of chests, or the frames of mirrors or paintings. Or it might be painted onto a ceramic or glass dish. The display of weapons called the lamiera di arme, installed in the portego or sala, was the quintessential emblem of noble identity. In the aftermath of the disastrous events of the War of Cambrai, Doge Leonardo Loredan castigated himself and his peers for removing the weapons from the room to accommodate guests at large banquets and saw the growth in luxurious living as an offense to God.82 But some houses maintained, or restored, the traditional arrangement, for 165
not only did Sansovino describe them as typical items in the Venetian sala in 1581 but a number of inventories of the period include them as well.83 A Lake Price drawing shows such an arrangement in the Palazzo Capello, on the Grand Canal, next to the Palazzo Barbarigo della Terraza, which can be seen through the window in the background (Fig. 9).84 O n a list of respectable but far from opulent household goods of the recently deceased Magnifico Michele Memmo were a silver cup and twelve gilded knives engraved with the Memmo and Ciera arms and a sparsely furnished portego. The sole furnishings in that room were twenty-four well-worn benches, twelve walnut chairs with straw seats, a gilded shield with a helmet bearing the Memmo arms, a standard, a restelliera (display rack with spears), and a regimental banner.85 This brings us to the overriding principle that informs the treatises on economica. Strongly rooted in the noble consciousness of the period throughout Italy was the insistence that the house conform to the social class and economic level of the owner. The concept that had already been articulated by Alberti and Filarete in the fifteenth century was particularly important to the Brescian Lanteri. He insisted that each class or estate should have a house that was suitable to its own honor and dignity: “Because it would not be appropriate for a merchant to live in a sumptuous palace, built with great magnificence, or that a rich feudal lord living off his investments should have in a small habitation.”86 The same principle held true for dress, comportment, interior decoration, expenditures, and servants: each social rank had its own obligations and its own limits. It was just as wrong to push beyond as to fall short. Honor resided in respecting the requirements of rank and role and in renouncing excessive ostentation.87 Silvio Antoniano wrote in 1584: “That the small artisan would wish to be equal to the citizen, the citizen to the gentleman, the gentleman to the tided lord, and the latter to the prince; these are things intolerable and beyond reason, akin, I say, to thefts and robberies, and there are no riches that could make up for such depths. From them are born debts and interest payments and bills and multiple usuries.”88 Again, Memmo considered the issue from a Venetian perspective: “I say that our city being divided into three qualities of men ... I judge a different habitation to be appropriate for an honored citizen [patrician], another for a merchant [the cittadino and other well-to-do 166
commoners], and another for an artisan.” He warned, furthermore, that many a patrician had come to ruin for building a princely palace beyond his means and subjecting his family to shame and distress. He concluded that the palace should “be decorated and furnished according to the condition of the patron and the custom of the city.”89 A t stake was the order of society. Indeed, the all too human vices of pride, ambition, and envy were among the greatest threats to Venetian consensus and solidarity. Ostentatious public display by the rich could only exacerbate the inequities of rank and wealth that were becoming ever more obvious in the sixteenth century. Not surprisingly, admonitions of the church and the disapproval of conservative patricians adhering to the old values of frugality and discretion were insufficient to check tendencies toward acquisition and disruptive magnificence. So how did Venetians deal, with the tensions produced by a sizable group of nobles who were not wealthy and a sizable group of rich commoners who were not noble? Sumptuary legislation was the primary legal mechanism for controlling the display of wealth, and it was no more successful in Venice than elsewhere in Italy.90 A summary look at Venetian initiatives reveals a succession of high hopes and repeated disappointments.91 The earliest such law was passed by the Great Council in 1299 in an attempt to limit expenditures for marriage celebrations, events that marked the intersection between public and private life, and to a lesser degree for women’s luxury clothing.92 Although Venice had created a hereditary patriciate just two years earlier, the statute applied to all men and women across the board, of whatever rank, with the exception of the doge and his family— a privilege that was to remain until the end of the Republic. The egalitarian tone was typical of sumptuary legislation throughout Italy during this period, when other emerging communes sought to blur class distinctions, thus allowing new merchant elites to share power with, if not to replace, traditional hereditary elites. 93 In Venice, the aim may well have been to curb discontent on the part of those families who were excluded from the new noble caste. Although the 1299 law was revoked in 1307, another attempt to curb spending came in 1334. With marriage celebrations and clothing again the primary targets, the Great Council framed the problem in economic terms, declaring that 167
“inordinate and especially superfluous expenses by both men and women are continually being made in this city, beyond the possibility of any person, from which abundant expenditures much goes to waste, and men are reduced to nothing.”94 The Senate took a moralizing stance, arguing that legislation was necessary “because cupidity is the root of all evil and sin and hidden vice that easily creep up on men and women.”95 This dual charge, with the emphasis shifting according to the political and social circumstances, provided the rationale for all subsequent sumptuary legislation. In the first half of the fifteenth century weddings were forgotten, and legislative attempts to control conspicuous display were centered almost exclusively on dress. In 1400 it was the socha oxpellanda, a mantle worn by both men and women, whose sleeves had grown to considerable dimensions.96 But if the wealthy could not have voluminous sochae, then they would line the cut-down versions with costly furs, such as ermine or marten. In 1403 these too were forbidden.97 In 1425 it was the cost of brides’ trousseaus that was “the consumption of their men and also the cause of much ill,” and new restrictions were ordered. In 1442 it was gowns of cloth of gold or silver. With some outfits now costing as much as 600 ducats, husbands or fathers of ladies who wore gowns made of such luxurious fabrics would be obliged to make a forced loan to the government of 1,000 lire. The logic was irrefutable: anyone who could afford such clothing could also afford to support the state in a time of financial need.98 The law was extended to male dress in 1456, when the Senate complained that the youth of the city had begun to wear clothing of similarly precious materials. As with the fur-lined sochae, ingenious tailors soon discovered ways to circumvent the rules and began to line sleeves with the forbidden stuffs. In 1473 a weary Senate affirmed that whatever was forbidden for clothing was also prohibited for linings.99 Excessive expenses for wedding celebrations and banquets of the compagnie della calza came under attack in 1460 and again in 1466, when a maximum cost of half a ducat per guest was set, with the substantial penalty for offenders of 200 ducats plus exclusion for two years from office for patricians and from piazza San Marco and Rialto for commoners. Informants were promised half the fine, and if they were slaves or indentured servants, they were also given their freedom.100 In 168
1472 banquets were again the primary target. Realizing the futility of only setting a maximum cost per guest, the state now went inside the kitchen. Specifically forbidden were pheasants, francolins, peacocks, partridge, and doves. The number of dishes was limited to three, not counting confections, and food was not to be gilded. N or would dinners in public (presumably in squares and courtyards and on fondamente [sidewalks next to canals]) be tolerated any longer: “rather only private ones in the chambers as the ancients were accustomed to do, and only with small sweets [served].”101 Indeed, even more private space was no longer beyond the reach of state inspectors. While lavish banquets and costly women’s clothing and jewelry remained favored targets for regulation, the Great Council began to show concern for the decoration and furnishing of private palaces. In 1476 it went inside the bedroom with a decree that condemned “the immoderate and excessive expenses that are made in this city in the ornament of ladies and the decoration of beds and chambers to the great offense of our lord god and the universal damage of our gentlemen and citizens, that as a thing alien to every laudable and honorable custom and example, can no longer be tolerated in any way.” 102 The cost of decorating the bedchamber itself with wood, gilding, and paint was not to exceed 150 ducats.105 In 1483 the Republic was embroiled in a war with Ferrara, and the response was predictable. As Pietro Bembo would later write in his Della historia vinitiana, “Since already before this war the city was inundated with every sort of license, at the beginning of the following year the laws regarding domestic expenses were renewed, and they forbade peacocks and pheasants at the banquets, and the most delicate viands; and in the chamber it was not permitted to use decorations of gold and silver and porphyry. [It held] that ornaments for women could not exceed 10 libre of gold; and promised great prizes to the accusers, and to servants their freedom.”104 In 1489 the “many wise, useful, and profitable statutes” on clothing, banquets, and other immoderate expenses were reaffirmed, with a new commission made up of “three of our honorable gentlemen, ready and enthusiastic,” elected to reform and enforce them. Under the tide Savij sora le pompe de le donne they were given 169
offices at Rialto and considerable discretion over all kinds of sumptuary violations, not just those involving women.105 They immediately noted that two new items, “completely vain and superfluous, which exceed the private,” had recently entered the bedchambers: “the restelli and gilded chests, very sumptuous and valuable.” These were now to be prohibited, with fines levied on the owner and the masters who made them, and anyone who found them “could in fact possess them, and they would be freely his.”106 The irrationality of a penalty that allows the accuser to possess a forbidden object does not seem to have occurred to the drafters of the law. Indeed, it reveals one of the basic flaws of sumptuary legislation, for it was grounded in ambiguity from start to finish. O n the one hand, the consumption of “vain and superfluous” goods did, indeed, squander capital; but on the other, spending was necessary for a healthy economy. Luxurious display was not an evil in itself, since it was allowed to the church and to rulers like the doge; but the principle of mediocritas in Venice made it particularly difficult for the noble elite to distinguish itself from a wealthy citizen class without simply outspending it.107 Another troublesome form of home decoration would come under scrutiny in the Senate just a month later. The recently introduced custom of laying carpets atop tablecloths on dinner tables was found to be a “useless and unnecessary superfluity” and was now to be summarily banned for banquets for the compagnie, weddings, or any other occasion. Among the unseemly items of women’s clothing that had recently appeared on the scene were wraps of luxury furs like sables, ermine, and lynx covered with iridescent silk. These too were held to be “detestable to god and the world” and were not to be tolerated.108 And yet, for all the high-minded rhetoric, and despite stiff monetary fines and other penalties, compliance was elusive. In 1497 the Senate concerned itself with “the immoderate use of pearls in our city,” complaining that women were wearing pearls worth 600 to 800 ducats and more despite the statutory limitation of one single strand of pearls worth up to 50 ducats decreed in 1476,109 A new acrossthe-board ban was passed forbidding all persons of whatever quality, condition, or sex, in the city or in its dominions, to use pearls on their person (head, neck, neckline, breast, fingers, or arms), their dress, or their home furnishings. Husbands 170
or fathers of miscreant wives and daughters would be assessed an extra tax of 25 ducats at each decima (tax declaration) for the next ten years. Any person or official who observed a violator could appropriate the pearls for himself. Thus, one could possess pearls but not wear them. In this case, the contradiction had a rationale, for such laws were often temporarily revoked for receptions of distinguished visitors to the city. On such occasions the splendor of the pearlbedecked matron became the splendor of the state.110 The tendency toward intrusion into the private spaces of Venetian palaces became even more pronounced in the sixteenth century A t a session in January 1509, only months before the humiliating defeat at Agnadello, the Senate spoke out once again on marriage banquets. It was a time for reassessment. The two banquets that were restricted to forty guests each in the statute of December 1489 were now being attended by three hundred guests and more. And because it is impossible that such a small number would be observed at the wedding feast following the sposar, and this is a certain thing that each of this council by its prudence understands very well, if the orders and laws were not so very strict then almost everyone would willingly observe them. The solution was ingenious: to entertain the guests in an expanded number of dinners. N ow between the engagement and the marriage there could be six small dinners for twenty-five guests each and two large dinners for fifty or fewer, and after the marriage itself there could be a dinner for up to eighty guests “because it is impossible to do it with [only] forty persons, as everyone knows.”112 The same foods were forbidden as in the law of 1489, but collations were now to be served only in the chambers and not in the sala. Ever-expanding reception parties were also an ongoing problem. Whereas previously only the closest female relatives had been invited to receive the other guests, as many as fifty, eighty, a hundred, and more ladies were now taking part, “so that there are more who receive than those who are received.”113 This “more than any other thing is the cause of great expense to our citizens, because in order to go to such offices and spectacles, everyone is forced to exceed the others w ith pomp and new fashions.”114 So it was now prohibited to have more than twenty ladies in the reception party, “whether in the portego or camera or elsewhere,” for 171
marriages, childbirth celebrations, election of officers and procuratorships, or the return from regiments.115 In addition to a share of the fines and manumission offered to slaves who reported on their masters and full payment of unfilled contracts to hired servants, all scalchi (dining-room stewards) and cooks who served at such banquets were obligated, under penalty of a 25 ducat fine and 6 months in prison, to go in advance to the office of the savi to report where they had been called to serve so that the inspectors could be sent there; similarly, on the day after the banquet they had to report on the number of persons as well as the quality and type of food served.116 These were difficult times. The registers of the Senate were filled with legislation on debtors, numerous patricians were asking their creditors for extensions, and there were special tax levies.117 The fiscal situation remaining precarious, the Senate again rearranged the dinner tables of the wealthy. In May 1510 it decreed that “all worked silver, except for six cups and two salt cellars for each family, knives, forks, and spoons, and likewise all worked gold, except for glasses and rings and gold jewelry, cannot be used during the present war in any way, under penalty of forfeiting them permanently.” Within eight days all were required to bring the remainder of their silver and gold to the Zecca, where it would be appraised. Credits were given for appropriated items, which were to be broken and melted down immediately “so that they cannot be presented more than one time.”118 The travails were not over. In February 1511 the Senate criticized wealthy families who continued to spend lavishly in contravention of the laws, “throwing away a great sum of money,” while they did not pay their special tax levies in these difficult times, which were “known to everyone.” Stricter measures of enforcement were necessary, and it was decided to place two of the procurators, the highest officials in the city next to the doge, in charge for a one-year term “to moderate, correct, and castigate those who had committed and commit the stated transgressions, worthy of the greatest attention, and all other exorbitant and dishonorable expenses.”119 The two procurators, for all their prestige, were no more successful than their predecessors. The Senate declared at the end of March 1512 that many women as 172
well as men” were spending even more than they had before, despite the great costs to the state of the continuing wars, “thinking up diverse costumes and new fashions [and] putting a great sum of money in many other frivolous things, from which one does not draw any utility.”120 In May the Senate was presented with a new redaction of the well-worn laws. This was intended to pull together all the previous regulations, passed at different times, into a single statute, thus eliminating contradictions, and to make some modifications “in order to quiet unbridled appetites.” Women’s fashions were targeted as usual, but with the greatest specificity to date. The parte (law) was, as Bistort put it, a true and proper “treatise of tailoring and dressmaking of its time.”121 From what it prohibits we can tell what was worn- Wedding gifts to the bride were now limited to six forks or six spoons. Indeed, all inhabitants of the city were forbidden to introduce “any fashion that could be imagined or excogitated.” Masters who made any of the prohibited items would face a 25-ducat fine for each offense and six months in prison. As far as home furnishings were concerned, the old prohibitions held, with lavishly decorated bed linens, gilded chests, cradles, restelli, mirrors, and other implements decorated with silver, gold embroidery, or jewels strictly forbidden. To these were now added andirons worked from damascene gold or silver. Momarie, theatrical performances, and masquerades, typically produced for wedding celebrations by the compagnie della calza, were now incorporated into general sumptuary legislation for the first time, reaffirming a similar decree of the Council of Ten of 1508 (and documenting its ineffectiveness). All such representations, whether public or private, whether tragedy or comedy or eclogue, were to be banned as threats to public morals and the corruption of youth. The new law was no more successful than those it had augmented. Only three months later the Senate would declare: “The fickleness of unbridled appetites of men as well as women continues to grow so much, that few care about spending, and they throw their riches and goods to the winds; and few fear and hold in reverence our lord God.” It reaffirmed by a less than overwhelming vote of 98 to 63 its firm intention to impose the penalties provided in the statute.122 Prosecutions were made, but many judgments were appealed. According to a June 1513 decree of the Great Council, many came to the Collegio every day in order 173
to appeal condemnations for infractions of the sumptuary laws, requesting their cases to be handled “cum instantia expeditione.” The doge and his councilors were too busy to deal with these matters, and appeals were handed over to the XX Savij in Rialto for consideration.123 Clearly, the piecemeal approach to sumptuary legislation was not working. Attempting once again to “extinguish the immoderate expenditures that not only offend the lord God but are also the cause of ruin of the faculties of our nobles and citizens,” the Senate finally set up a permanent magistracy on 8 February 1514 mv called the Magistrato alle Pompe. Consisting of three nobles who carried the tide provveditori and served terms of two years, it remained in place, presumably with little more success than its predecessors, for nearly five decades.124 A phrase appearing in an otherwise pro forma reiteration of the laws on banquets in 1526 suggests that compliance was not enthusiastic: “And truly, those who would act so dishonestly as to throw bread or oranges at our employees, or push them or kick them out, will fall subject to a penalty of fifty ducats.”125 The entire set of laws was recapitulated several times in the decades that followed. Finally, in a tumultuous meeting of the Senate in January 1560, another attempt was made to reform the statutes, with separate ballots taken on each of fifteen articles. The most controversial provisions concerned home decoration. It was proposed that all tapestries and spalliere more than four quarte high, as well as any hangings containing gold or silver thread, be banned. However, a provision that prohibited items could be registered with the office of the provveditori and used until they wore out barely passed by a vote of 100 to 77, with 11 abstentions. The matter was a divisive one. After a vote to enact the statutes into law that again resulted in a split vote, with 95 in favor, 45 against, and 39 abstentions, it was agreed to suspend the entire proceedings. Within a month a committee of five, including the provedditori, appeared before the Senate. Their statement is the first to articulate with unambiguous clarity the fundamental concern of the time: “W e must in every respect give much consideration and use much study in conserving the equality between our nobles and citizens and in prohibiting those things that could give rise to any bad effect.” Although the traditional moral and economic concerns underlying sumptuary legislation were still present, now the social order 174
itself was given the highest priority. The committee argued strenuously that the controversial provision allowing proscribed clothing and home decoration to be used until it was worn out should be annulled. Otherwise, it would “bring to destruction all that which has been decided so maturely in such matters. Not only would it be against the dignity of this council but it could give rise to diverse bad effects among our citizens.” The provision was repealed; however, the vote testifies to a divided heart: 92 in favor, 27 against, and 21 abstentions.126 In 1562 the Senate brought to fruition the reform begun two years earlier, passing the most comprehensive sumptuary legislation to date. While women’s clothing and jewelry and, as always, the adornment of courtesans received the usual critical concern, the list of proscribed room decorations had lengthened once again. Tapestries and spalliere more than five feet high were not to be tolerated, nor were spalliere a figure or leather wall hangings, whether gold-tooled or not. Also prohibited were gilded andirons and fireplace furnishings or those worked alla damaschina, as well as chairs upholstered with figured velvet or decorated with gilding other than studs. Rules on banquet fare had also become more specific and wide-ranging. With festoons over doorways and windows, “as in any other place,” now forbidden, the types and amounts of meat, fowl, and fish to be served each guest were specified, with desserts to consist of only “small confections, pieces of ordinary pastry, and simple fruits of all types according to the season.” Severe penalties were levied on cooks, stewards, and tailors whose services allowed rich families to flout the law. Moreover, new standards of austerity were also applied to servants’ livery and decorations for gondolas and other boats. Beyond that, the doors of the family palace were to be thrown open to officials of the Magistrato alle Pompe during banquets and childbirth celebrations to ensure that the sumptuary laws were respected.127 Similar proscriptions had been announced before, with little lasting effect. What was significant in the new bill was the strengthening of the Magistrato alle Pompe as a body with full investigative, judicial, and legislative powers. With the addition of two sopraprovveditori elected yearly by the Senate, the number of magistrates was increased from three to five. Required to meet three times a week, the magistrates were able to change laws quickly in response to new fashions without a 175
protracted Senate debate, and they were given considerable latitude in interpreting them. But their most significant, and controversial, prerogatives lay in the judicial area, where the accused had only limited rights and the magistrates held all the cards. A case would be assigned to one magistrate, who examined witnesses or accusers in secret and presented the case to the other magistrates for the final judgment. Although the accused was allowed to present written responses in his or her own defense, such evidence could not be entered into the court record if it concerned accusations that had already been clearly proven to the presiding magistrate’s satisfaction. Four magistrates were required to be present to render judgment. Only two votes were necessary to condemn the accused, and the decision could not be appealed. Subsequent attempts by the Avogaria di Comun to force the Magistrato alle Pompe to release case records for review were rejected by the Senate. As the magistrates themselves put it, it was not possible to deal with “certain subterfuges, at times too pernicious, in ordinary ways.” 128 For all its rigor and comprehensiveness, the new law was only one more document in a tattered ledger of failed attempts at public control of private consumption. Legislation continued to be passed and ignored. The areas of Venetian life that conformed most closely to the sumptuary laws were in the realm of hospitality— the meanness of refreshments that Coryat and Casola had observed. But even in this area any such compliance was probably more a matter of tradition than of law. And Sanudo’s diaries are full of sumptuous entertainments that flagrantly violated the most rigorous attempts to control them. Perhaps the most significant thing about Venetian sumptuary laws is that, with few exceptions, they were binding upon all citizens, whether noble or commoner, “of whatever status, degree, or condition.” By the later sixteenth century they allowed the poorer patricians to save face with an official justification to contain family expenses within affordable limits. Beyond that, there was a flourishing rental market in clothing, spalliere, and other types of household adornments for those who could not buy their own. And strazzaruoli, merchants in second-hand clothing, were among the most prosperous retailers in the city.129 Still, the question of dress is more complicated than it seems at first glance. O n the most basic level, the uniformity of male dress in pubhc space would appear to level the 176
playing field for those above the artisan level. But while the black toga was the standard uniform for patricians and cittadini, hierarchy was reinforced through the wearing of colors, the quality of the fabric, and the cut of the sleeve. The long lists of officials in Sanudoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Diarii who were dressed in scarlatto or pavonazzo or with sleeves alla ducale or a comedo on ceremonial occasions is an index of the value accorded dress as a sign (Fig. 10). But allowing that high office was usually secured by families with economic power and a high social status, the costumes displayed, at least in theory, a hierarchy of office and not a hierarchy of wealth. 130 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dress was another matter, however. That the wives of rich commoners were allowed to display more luxury than those of the poorer nobility was a paradox regarded with disdain by visitors like Coryat. Why were Venetian patricians reluctant to further reify their legally established social and political dominance over wealthy cittadini by adopting a privileged form of dress, in the manner of other aristocratic elites? It has been convincingly argued that such legislation in other states was essentially based upon the fear of deception: that an individual dressing outside his group norms could threaten the established stratified order.131 In Venice, by contrast, the greater fear was surely that the well-established order would be threatened by disparities within and between the groups. It was more prudent to insist on egalitarian rights while maintaining hereditary privilege. However, as in most societies, some members were more equal than others, and the exceptions are worth noting. First, there was the doge and his family: it was incumbent upon them, as symbols of the Republic, to express the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s full magnificence. Then there were the cavalieri, or knights; they too remained exempt from restrictions on dress throughout the period.132 Beyond that, the reform law of 1562 extended this privilege to orators who represented the Republic at foreign courts and their families. Finally, the prohibition of colorful liveries for gondoliers and servants repressed not only the grandeur of a wealthy family but also ensured that servants would not be taken for their social betters. In any event, the accounts of contemporary observers like Sansovino suggest that all such measures were
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exercises in futility and failed to close the widening gap between those who were noble and those who simply lived in a noble manner.133 Was Venice’s unwillingness to use sumptuary laws to reinforce the social hierarchy an example of “the consummate political wisdom of the republic,” as the Venetian secretary Antonio Milledonne and the French jurist Jean Bodin saw it? 134 Perhaps it was simply a pragmatic acceptance of a de facto nobility that was born from ineluctable economic and social forces whose roots pushed deep into Venice’s (ignoble) mercantile past.
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Notes 1. See, e.g., Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300- 1600 (Baltimore, 1993); Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York, 1996); and Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York, 1987). 2. For a critical view, see Ingrid Rowland, “The Renaissance Revealed,” in New York Review of Books, 6 November 1997. 3. M. Margaret Newett, Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Year 1494 (Manchester, 1907), 128-29. 4. Salvatore Battaglia, Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 18 vols. (Turin, 1961— 96), 2:824: “Casa aperta: Avere, tenere casa aperta: ricevere spesso e con molta cordialità molti ospiti. Anche: possedere una casa provvista di tutto ciò che occorre per potervi abitare.” Sansovino’s use of the word appears closest to the second meaning. Cf. Vincenzo Giustiniani, “Discorso sopra la pittura (1610),” in his Discorsi sulle arti e sui mestieri, ed. A. Banti (Florence, 1981), 45: “in vero è cosa degna di maraviglia il considerare il gran numero de’ pittori ordinari, e di molte persone che tengono casa aperta con molta famiglia.” 5. Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, con aggiunta da D. Giustiniano Martinioni, 2 vols. (1663; reprint, Venice, 1968), 1:384-85. The translation is based in part upon David Chambers and Brian Pullan, eds., Venice: A Documentary History, 1450-1630 (Oxford, 1992), 25. 6. See Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Vocabolario della lingua italiana, 4 vols. in 5 (Rome, 1986-94), 3, pt. 2: 976 (“politia, s. f. . . . sopratutto per rendere un partic. uso del termine greco, proprio di Aristotele nel trattato della Politica, dove indica la forma di costituzione nella quale il governo è in mano al popolo, che lo esercita in vista del bene comune”) and 979 (“polizia . . . Forma di governo; costituzione, ordinamento della città e dello stato; amministrazione, anche di istituzioni e di attività pubbliche; vita politica partecipazione alla vita pubblica; comportamento civile”); Manlio Cortelazzo and Paolo Zolli, Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 5 vols. (Bologna, 1979—88), 4:950 (“polizia, s. f. sistema col quale si governa bene una città [av. 1449, D. Burchiello]”); and Carlo Battisti and Giovanni Alessio, Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vòls. (Florence, 1975), 4:3002 (“polizia f. [XVI-XVII see] . . . forma di governo”). 7. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Vocabolario della lingua italiana, 3, pt. 2: 976 (“polizia .. “Forma ant. per pulizia, nel sign, proprio, e più spesso in quelli connessi con l’agg. polito, cioè finezza di modi e di comportamento, gentilezza e cortesia, raffinatezza, eleganza e anche probità”); Battaglia, Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 13:772 (“Polizia... Raffinatezza di modi, finezza di tratto, compitezza di contegno [talvolta puramente formale o osservata per opportunità o con affettazione] ; buona educazione, urbanità, cortesia, gentilezza; correttezza, scrupolosità.—Anche: ostentazione di lusso”); Battisti and Alessio, Dizionario etimologico italiano, 4:3001 (“polito agg., XIV see., -ezza (XVII see., Redi); liscio, terso; ‘pulito’; v. dotta, lat. politus adorno, elegante, fme’j. 8. Thomas Coryat, Coryat’s Crudities, 2 vols. (Glasgow, 1905), 1:415. 9. Dennis Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice, 1400-1600 (Baltimore, 1996), 231-32. 10. Coryat, Coryat’s Crudities, 415. 11. See Margaret King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, 1986). 12. Still fundamental is James Cushman Davis, The Decline of the Venetian Nobility as a Ruling Class (Baltimore, 1962). But see now Giuseppe Trebbi, “La società veneziana,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 6, Dal Rinascimento al Barocco, ed. Gaetano Cozzi and Paolo Prodi (Rome, 1994), 129-213. 13. Claudio Donati, L ’idea di nobiltà in Italia, secoli X IV — X V III (Bari, I995), 3—17. 14. Nicolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra laprima deca di Tito Dvio 1.55. English translation from Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, trans. Allan Gilbert, 3 vols. Purham, N.C., 1965), 1:308—9. See also Donati, L ’idea di nobiltà, 29—30. 15. Machiavelli, Discorsi, 1.34. 16. Ibid., 1.55; Machiavelli, 310. 17. Contarmi composed the treatise in Latin between 1523 and 1531; it was first published in Paris in 1543. An Italian translation came out a year later in Venice: La Republica e i magistrati di Vinegia (Venice, 1544). See also Donati, L ’idea di nobiltà, 56—58. 18. The English translation is taken from Gasper Contareno, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, trans. Lewes Lewkenor (1599; reprint, Amsterdam, 1969), 16. 19. Ibid., 17-18. 189
20. Stanley Chojnacki, “Nobility, Women, and the State: Marriage Regulation in Venice, 1420—1535,” in Marriage in Italy, 1300—1650, ed. Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge;'1998), 128-51. 21. Contareno, Commonwealth and Government of Venice, 18. 22. Giovambattista Nenna da Bari, Il Nennio: H quale ragiona di nobiltà (Venice, 1543), bk. 3 (no pagination) 23. Tommaso Garzoni, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (Venice, 1595), 175. The book was first published in 1585 in Venice, with many subsequent reprintings. It is also available in a modern critical edition in two volumes edited by Giovanni Battista Bronzini (Florence, 199b). For Garzoni, see John Marnn, The Imaginary Piazza: Tommaso Garzoni and the Late Italian Renaissance,” in Portraits of Medieval and Renaissance Living: Essays in Memory of David Herlihy, ed. Samuel K. Cohn Jr. and Steven A. Epstein (Ann Arbor, 1996), 439—54. 24. See A. D. Fraser Jenkins, “Cosimo de’ Medici’s Patronage of Architecture and the Theory of Magnificence,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1970) 162—70; and David Thomson, Renaissance Architecture: Critics, Patrons, Luxury (Manchester, 1993), 1-28. 25. Girolamo Muzio, Ugentilhuomo del Mutio Iustinopolitano (Venice, 1565), 1—55- See also Donati, L ’idea di nobiltà, 126—28. 26. See Peter Burke, Venice and Amsterdam: A Study of Seventeenth-Century Elites, 2d ed. Pondon, 1994), 11-15, which speaks of three hierarchies within the patriciate: status (antiquity of the family), political power, and wealth; Trebbi, “La società veneziana,” 129-52; Donati, L ’idea di nobiltà, 198-205; and Davis, The Decline of the Venetian Nobility. 27. Paolo Paruta, Della pefettione della vita politica di M. Paolo Paruta nobile vinetiano, cavaliere & procuratore di San Marco (Venice, I579), bk. 3, quoted in Donati, L ’idea di nobiltà, 203: “secondo certa geometrica proporzione la condizione diversa delle persone.” 28. Antonio Colluraffi da Librizzi, Il nobile veneto (Venice, 1623). Cf. Muzio, H gentilhuomo, 1 -1 1, who makes essentially the same point. 29. For a fine study of the tradition of living nobile, see Daniela Frigo, R padre di famiglia: Governo della casa e governo civile nella tradizione dell’ "economica" tra Cinque e Seicento (Rome, 1985). See also Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 3-42. 30. The original is available in English translation as The Estate Manager (Oeconomicus), trans. Robin Waterfield, in Xenophon, Conversations of Socrates, trans. Hugh Tredennick and Robin Waterfield (London, 1990), 269—359. 31. Alessandro Piccolomini, Della institutione de laf elice vita dell’huomo nato nobile e in città libera (Venice, 1545). Cf. Donati, L ’idea di nobiltà, 60-61; and Mary Rogers, “An Ideal Wife at the Villa Maser: Veronese, the Barbaros, and Renaissance Theorists of Marriage,” Renaissance Studies 7 (1993): 385. 32. Frigo, Rpadre difamiglia, ch. 4. 33. Nicolò Vito di Gozze, Accademico occulto: Nel quale brevemente, trattando la vera economia, s’insegna, non meno conf acilità che dottamente, il governo, non pure della casa tanto di città quanto di contado, ma ancora il vero modo di accrescere e conservare le ricchezze (Venice, 1589), 6. See also Frigo, Rpadre difamiglia, 134-35. 34. Giacomo Lanteri, Della economica: Trattato di m. Giacomo Lanteri gentilhuomo bresciano, nel quale si dimostrano le qualità, che all’uomo et alla donna separatamente convengono pel governo della casa (Venice, 1560), 29. See also Frigo, R padre della famiglia, 58 n. 72. 35. Laura Megna, “Comportamenti abitativi del patriziato veneziano (1582— 1740),” Studi Veneziani, n.s., 22 (1991): 253-323, esp. 309. For a discussion ofLorenzo Priuli (1446-1518), who followed just such a strategy, see Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 86-89. 36. Megna, “Comportamenti abitativi,” 272, 278. 37. Giovanni Maria Memmo, Dialogo del Magn. Cavaliere M . Gio. Maria Memmo (Venice, 1563), 80. 38. Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture (1738; reprint, New York, 1965), 38 (bk. 2, ch. 2); the Italian edition appeared in 1570. 39. Lanteri, Della economica, 125—27. 40. Ibid., 102-3. 41. See Peter Thornton, The Ralian Renaissance Interior, 1400-1600 (London, 1991), 284. For Florentine palaces and their use, see Brenda Preyer, “Planning for Visitors at Florentine Palaces,” Renaissance Studies 12 (1998): 357-74. 42. Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 288—90. 190
43. Newett, Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage, 339—40. 44. Anton Francesco Doni, I marmi (Florence, 1863), 168: Nanni. Quelle canterine si piccolo, che a pena vi può stare un letto, una tavola e due forzieri, non saranno già lodate: a poi fare una sala che pare una piazza! Betto. Le camere son fatte per dormire, e non per passeggiare o banchettarvi dentro, nè per ballarvi; però le son d’avanzo. La sala sta ben così, perchè vi si riduce tutta la casa a un tratto dentro: le donne si stanno a piedi delle finestre, sì per veder lume a lavorare con l’ago le cose sottili e i ricami; sì per potere esser comode a farsi alla finestra; alla tavola in testa si mangia, a quella da lato si gioca: alcuni passeggiano, altri si stanno al fuoco; e così v’è luogo per tutti. Behind the Walls 333 Cf. Alison A. Smith, “Gender, Ownership, and Domestic Space: Inventories and Family Archives in Renaissance Verona,” Renaissance Studies 12 (1998): 375-91. 45. Memmo, Dialogo, 81. 46. Manfredo Tafìiri, “Il pubblico e il privato: Architettura e committenza a Venezia,” in Storia di Venezia, 6:367—70. 47. Lionardo di Niccolò Frescobaldi, Visits to the Holy Places of Egypt, Sinai, Palestine, and Syria in 1384 by Frescobaldi, Gucci & Sigoli, trans. Theophilus Bellorini and Eugene Hoade, Publications of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanorum, 6 (Jerusalem, 1948), 33-34. 1 am grateful to Rosamond Mack for this reference. 48. Newett, Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage, 339—40. 49. For the full range of possibilities, see Isabella Palumbo-Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano e dell’artista nella Venezia del Cinquecento,” Studi Veneziani, n.s., 8 (1984): 112. 50. The first three editions were published in one volume. A second revised and expanded edition was published in 18 80, and a third edition was published in 18 8 5. The book was expanded to three volumes in the fourth edition, of 1905-8, presumably the basis for Horatio F. Brown’s English translation, Venice: Its Individual Growth from the Earliest Beginnings to the Fall of the Republic (Chicago, 1907). The work was again expanded and revised in three more editions. The final and seventh edition was published in Bergamo in 1927—29 and reprinted in Trieste in 1973. Another important early study is Cesare Augusto Levi, Le collezioni veneziane d’arte e d’antichità dal secolo X IV ai nostri giorni, 2 vols. (Venice, 1906). 51. Unlike Molmenti, Palumbo-Fossati limited herself to the sixteenth century. The fundamental essay is Palumbo-Fossati, “L’intemo della casa dell’artigiano.” Also valuable are idem, “Il collezionista Sebastiano Erizzo e l’inventario dei suoi beni,” Ateneo Veneto 171 (1984): 201-18; idem, “Livres et lecteurs dans la Venise du XVIe siècle,” Revue Franfaise d’Histoire du Uvre, n.s., 54 (1985): 481—513; idem, “La casa veneziana di Gioseffo Zarlino nel testamento e nell’inventario dei beni del grande teorico musicale,” Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana 20 (1986): 633-49; and E)ora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study (New Haven, 1997). For the seventeenth century, see Simona Savini Branca, R collezionismo veneziano nel ’600 (Florence, 1965); Wilfrid Brulez, Marchands Flamands à Venise I (1368—1603) (Brussels, 1965); and Greta Devos and Wilfrid Brulez, Marchands Flamands a Venise II (1606—1621) (Brussels, 1986). 52. Marino Sanuto, I diarii di Marino Sanuto, ed. Rinaldo Fulin et al., 58 vols. (Venice, 1879-1903), 22:346 (6July 1516); see also ibid., 28:135 and 37:415. 53. See Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, 1:386. The side of the palace, with frescoes, is visible in the left background of Gentile Bellini’s Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo, at the Accademia in Venice. 54. See Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven, 1996), 62, 63, 69, for plates showing the frontispiece to a manuscript by Livy with the arms of the Cattaneo family and the figures of Justice/Temperance and Fortitude/ Charity and fresco fragments of Temperance, Charity, Constancy, and Hope from a house near San Zulian. 55. Archivio di Stato, Venice (ASV), Cancelleria Inferiore, Miscellanea Notai Diversi, busta 35, no. 27 (22 Junen July 1532), fols. n v-12. For the restello, see Palumbo-Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano e dell’artista,” 141-43. 56. Sanuto, I diarii, 53:553 (19 Sept. 1530) 57. ASV, Cancelleria Inferiore, Miscellanea Notai Diversi, busta 35, no. 27, fol. 12. 58. Ibid., busta 42, no. 66 (19 Oct. 1582), fols. 11-12. 59. The homo di legno, a wood mannequin on which to hang clothing or armor, was a very common item in Venetian inventories; it was usually placed in the portego. 60. ASV, Cancelleria Inferiore, Miscellanea Notai Diversi, busta 41, no. 57, fol. 4. 61. For this period, in addition to the references cited in n. 51, see Cristina De Benedictis, Per la storia del collezionismo italiano: Fonti e documenti (Florence, 1991). 191
62. Brulez, Marchands Flamands à Venise I, 33. 63. Federica Ambrosini, “ ‘Descrittioni del mondo’ nelle case venete dei secoli XVI e XVII,” Archivio Veneto, 5th ser., 112 (1981): 67-79. 64. Brulez, Marchands Flamands à Venise I, 633. 65. Memmo, Dialogo, 80-81. 66. ASV, Cancelleria Inferiore, Miscellanea Notai Diversi, busta 35, no. 4, fol. iv (1530-33). 67. Ibid., fols. 4-4V. 68. Memmo, Dialogo, 81. 69. Frigo, Il padre di famiglia, 137—39. 70. Palladio, Four Books of Architecture, 38 (bk. 2, ch. 2). 71. Piccolomini, Della institutione de la felice vita, fols. 259V—260, in an artful adaptation from Xenophon, who also used a boat metaphor to make the same point. 72. Palumbo-Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano e dell’artista,” 121-22. 73. For the variety and uses of Renaissance chests, see Thornton, Italian Renaissattce Interior, 192-204, which states that in Venice the cassa was probably a large chest equivalent to the Florentine cassone. 74. For the restello, or rastello, see Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 239-41. Gustav Ludwig, “Restello, Spiegel und Toilettenutensilien in Venedig zur Zeit der Renaissance,” Italienische Forschungen 1 (1906): 187-387, discusses the restello at length, suggesting a reconstruction of one listed in the testament of the painter Vincenzo Catena and explaining that it had two roles, as both a piece of furniture and an ornament. 75. Palumbo-Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano e dell’artista,” 141-43. 76. The furnishings are listed in Molmenti, La storia di Venezia nella vita privata, 7th ed., 3 vols. (1927-29; reprint, Trieste, 1973), 2:486: “Tre portiere de panno cremesin tagiade—Una portiera de panno rosso cremesin intagià de veludo verde—Un fornimento turchin de damasco, con cordelle d’oro da littiera da campo, con suoi forcieri et stramazzi—Doi cossini di veludo cremesin—Doi cossini di veludo negro—Una coltra d’ormesin cremesin fodrà de samito verde—Tre coltre bianche di tela imbotida—Una coltra de raso columbin fodrà de tela zala—Una coltra di rasetti turchina e bianca fodrà di tela rossa—Una coltra de raso giala fodrà cremesin— Doi filzade bianche—Un banchaleto de raso turchin con fìanze d’oro.” 77. Muzio, Il gentiluomo, 1-55, quoted in Donati, L ’idea di nobiltà, 126-28. 78. Brown, Venice and Antiquity, 262. 79. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art, 168—69. 80. Both works were part of the Miracles of the True Cross cycle made for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista ca. 1494—1506 and now in the Accademia Galleries in Venice (see Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio [New Haven, 1988]). 81. ASV, Cancelleria Inferiore, Miscellanea Notai Diversi, busta 35, no. 27, fol. 3. 82. Sanuto, I diarii, 17:246 (25 Oct. 1513). Cf. Felix Gilbert, “Venice in the Crisis of the League of Cambrai,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London, I973), 277, who must be incorrect in placing this room on the ground floor of the palace. 83. Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, 1:385. See also Palumbo-Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano e dell’artista,” 139. 84. This was a different, albeit equally noble branch of the Capello family from the Domenico Capello of Santa Maria Formosa. 85. ASV, Cancelleria Inferiore, Miscellanea Notai Diversi, busta 41, no. 48 (8 Jan. 1572 mv), fol. 3v. 86. Lanteri, Della economica, 14. 87. Ibid., 22. See also Frigo, Il padre di famiglia, 143-44. 88. Silvio Antoniano, Tre libri dell’educatione cristiana dei figliuoli (Verona, 1584), 296: “Che l’artefice minuto voglia agguagliarsi al cittadino, il cittadino al gentiluomo, il gentiluomo al titulato, e questi al principe; queste sono cose fuori d’ogni ragione e intollerabili, cose dico ai latrocini e alle rapine, e non è ricchezza alcuna che possa supplire a tanta voragine. Quindi poi nascono i debiti e gli interessi e le grose e multiplicate usure.” 89. Memmo, Dialogo, 79 and 81. 90. See Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Gli inganni delle apparenze: Disciplina di vesti e ornamenti alla fine del medioevo (Turin, 1996); and Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (New York, 1996) 91. See esp. Mary Margaret Newett, “The Sumptuary Laws of Venice in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Historical Essays First Published in 1902 in Commemoration of the Jubilee of the Owens 192
College Manchester, ed. T. F. Tout and James Tait (Manchester, 1907); Giulio Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe nella Republica di Venezia (Bologna, 1912); and Pierogiovanni Mometto, ‘“Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù’: Aspetti e problemi della questione del lusso nella Repubblica di Venezia (secolo XVI),” in Crimine, giustizia e società veneta in età moderna, ed. Luigi Berlinguer and Floriana Colao (Milan, 1989). 92. Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe, 90—91, 323—29. 93. Muzzarelli, Gli inganni delle apparenze, esp. 14. 94. ASV, Maggior Consiglio, Spiritus, fol. 162V (22 May 1534). quoted in Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe, 329: “Cum multe et maxime expense fiant continue in hac civitate inordinate et multum superflue in hominibus et feminis, ultra possibilitatem personarum, ex quibus multis expensis multi pereunt et homines ad nihilum deducuntur.” 95. ASV, Senato, Misti, reg. 16, fol. 67V, quoted in Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pomp 331: “quia cupiditas est radix omnium malorum et pecatum et vitium latens, quod homines et mulieres subripiunt de facili.” 96. Newett, “Sumptuary Laws ofVenice,” 275. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid.; Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 123. 99. Bistort, H Magistrato alle Pompe, 123-24. 100. Ibid., 94, 207; Newett, “Sumptuary Laws of Venice,” 273. 101. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 6, fol. 190V: “aza solamente privata in le chamere chome antiquitus far se voleva et de confecti menudi solamente.” See also Newett, “The Sumptuary Laws ofVenice,” 273, 277; and Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 207. 102. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 7, fols. 134-134V (28 Sept. 1476): “El sono intanto multiplicade le immoderate et excessive spexe che si fano in questa terra in ornamenti de done et apparati, sì de lecti, come de camere, cum grande offension del nostro signor dio et universal danno de nostri zentilhomeni et citadini che, come cossa aliena da ogni laudevole et honesto costume et exempio, non se po’ più tolerar per alcun modo.” See Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 352-63, for a complete transcription of the parte (law) passed by the Great Council on 17 November 1476. 103. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 7, fol. 134V. See also Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 239, 356-59 104. Quoted in Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 367 n. 3: “perciochè la Città già davanti a questa guerra in ogni sorte di licentia s’era allargata, furono nel principio dell’anno seguente rinnovate le leggi, che le spese domestiche riguardano, et vietato ne conviti i pavoni, et i fagiani, et le vivande più dilicate: et nelle camere i guarnimentì d’oro et d’argento et di porpora non fu permesso di usare. Che l'ornamento delle donne non potesse diece libre d’oro passare; et grandi premii a gli accusatori, et a servi la libertà promessa.” 105. Ibid. 106. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 10, fols. 184-85 (10 Dee. 1488): “Preterea, perchè da poco tempo in qua se è posto in consuetudine far nove spexe al tuto vane e superflue, le qual exciedeno el privato, nè mai se ne poi trazer alguna utilità, zoè i rastelli et chasse dorata, molto sumptuose et de valuta. Et nunc, sia azonto che tuti i dicti rastelli et chasse quovismodo dorate, siano di facto prohibite et bandite, siche da qui in avanti nullo modo se possino più uxar nè tegnir, soto tute le pene et strecture contegnude in la parte di ornamenti de le camere, sì a quelli che decetero havesseno ardir de tegnirle, come ai maistri che le lavorasseno. Et oltra tute le altre pene e strecture predicte, se algun maistro sarà trovado da qui in avanti lavorar alguna de le stesse casse prohibite in questo capitolo specificate, quelli che le troverano, siano chi se voglia, le possino de facto tuor et siano liberamente soe.” Cf. Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 368-73, which dates the statute to 1489. 107. See C. Kovesi Killerby, “Practical Problems in the Enforcement of Italian Sumptuary Law, 1200-1500,” in Crime, Society, and the Law in Renaissance Baly, ed. T. Dean and K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge, 1994), 118-19. Cf. Mometto, “Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù,” 254-55, which argues that Venetians attempted to safeguard domes tic production of luxury textiles against foreign imports but does not find a direct connection between the sumptuary laws and the production of silk cloth. 108. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 10, fol. 185. 109. ASV, Maggior Consiglio, Regina, fol. 160, in Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 353—54. 110. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 13, fol. 1. See also Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 185. 111. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 16, fol. 69V (16 Jan. 1508 mv): “Et perche Imposibelè, che al sposar tal poco numero sia observato: et certa cossa, è Cadauno de questo Conseglio, per la prudentia sua molto ben lintende, che quando li ordenj & le lege non serani tanto strettissime quasi da ognj uno serano volentarie observate.” The sposar was the public ceremony at which the marriage vows were exchanged. For the several stages of a Venetian wedding, see the fine summary in Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguined White, “How to (and
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How Not to) Get Married in Sixteenth-Century Venice (Selections from the Diaries ofMarin Sanudo),” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 43- 72. 112. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 16, fol. 69V (id Jan. 1508 mv): “Perche impossibel è farlo cum persone quaranta come ogniun intende.” 113. Ibid.: “Ita che sono più che accetano cha tuti quelle sono acetade.” 114. Ibid.: “Il che più che ognj altra cossa è causa de gran spexa à li Citadinj nostri: perche ogniuna per andar a tal offìcij & spectaculj se sforza cum pompe & fozze nuove avanzar le altre.” 115. Ibid. 116. Ibid. 117. Ibid., fol. 129V (14 Sept. 1509). 118. Ibid., reg. 17, fol. 14 (21 May 1510): “Landera parte che tutj li arzentj lavoradj exceptuate Tace sei, saliere do, per cadauna fameglia, cortellj, pironj & cuslier et similiter li oq lavoratj excepte vere & anellj & oq zoieladj. Non se possino usar durante la presente guerra per alcun modo: sotto pena de perder quellj inremissibiliter.” The parte was repeated a number of times; see, e.g., ibid., fols. 17V, 23, 27V, 85V-86. 119. Ibid., fol. 62 (14 Feb. 1510 mv); see also Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 51—52. 120. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 18 (30 Mar. 1512), fol. 4: “excogitando diversi habitj & foze inusitate: Ponendo gran summa de denarj in molte altre cosse legiere: delequal non se po trazer alcuna utilità.” See also Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 52-53. 121. Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 133. 122. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 18, fols. 32-32V (25 Aug. 1512). 123. Bistort, B Magistrato alle Pompe, 49, citing ASV, Maggior Consiglio, Deda, fols. 87-87V (5 and 17 June 1513). The X X Savij in Rialto was the tribunal that dealt with debtors to the Commune. 124. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 18, fols. 184V-185 (14 Feb. 1514 mv). 125. Quoted in Sanuto, I diarii, 40:751-52 (31 Jan. 1526). See also Labalme and Wfhite, “How to (and How Not to) Get Married in Sixteenth-Century Venice.” 126. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 43, fol. 109V (12 Feb. 1559 mv): “Si die per ogni rispetto haver molta consideratione et usar molto studio in conservar l’equalita’ fra li nobeli et cittadini nostri et in prohibir quelle cose che potessero partorir alcun mal effetto, onde essendo stati presi diversi capitoli in questo Conseglio sotto di xx del mese prossimamente passato in materia di pompe, tra li quali si come vi sono 14 che provedeno che sia servato l’honesto et moderato viver et vestir di questa nostra città, cosi si ritrova qual xv per il- qual e concesso, che si possino portar li habiti prohibiti nelli precedenti capitoli, et in altre parte prese per il passato fino alla consumatione di esse i col che vien ad esser distrutto tutto quello che cosi maturamente in tal materia e stato deliberato.” 127. Ibid., reg. 44, fols. 55-62V (28 Sept-15 Oct. 1562). For a transcription see Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe, 373-414. 128. ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 44, fol. Ó2v. See also Mometto, “Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù,” 270. 129. See Patricia Allerston, “L’abito come articolo di scambio nella società dell’età moderna: Alcune implicazioni,” in Le trame della moda, ed. Anna Giulia Cavagna and Grazietta Butazzi (Rome, 1995), 109-24; and idem, “Wedding Finery in Sixteenth- Century Venice,” in Marriage in Italy, 1300-1650, ed. Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge, 1998), 25-40. 130. See Stella Mary Newton, The Dress of the Venetians, 1494-1534 (Aldershot, England, 1988). Cf. P. Venturelli, “La moda come ‘status symbol’: Legislazione suntuaria e ‘segnali’ di identificazione sociale,” in Storia della moda, ed. R. Varese and G- Butazzi (Bologna, 1995), 27-54. 131. Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe, 9. 132. For cavalieri, see Matteo Casini, “Gli ordini cavallereschi a Venezia fra Quattro e Seicento: Problemi e ipotesi di ricerca,” Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Classe di scienze morali, lettere ed arti 156 (1997—98): 179—99. 133. Trebbi, “La società veneziana,” 146-48. 134. Ibid. See also Jean Bodin, I sei libri della republica tradotti di linguafrancese nell’italiana da Lorenzo Conti (Genoa, 1588), 620; and Antonio Milledonne, Ragionamento di doi gentiluomini, l’uno Romano, l’altro Venetiano: Sopra il governo della Republica Venetiana, fatto atti 15 digennaro 1580 al modo di Venetia (Venice, 1581), 52V.
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