Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400-1600 [Hardcover]

Ms. Evelyn S. Welch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2005

Shopping was as important in the Renaissance as it is today. This fascinating and original book breaks new ground in the area of Renaissance material culture, focusing on the marketplace and such related topics as middle-class to courtly consumption, the provision of foodstuffs, and the acquisition of antiquities and holy relics. The book investigates how men and women of different social classes went to the streets, squares, and shops to buy goods they needed and wanted on a daily—or a once-in-a-lifetime—basis, during the Renaissance period.

Evelyn Welch draws on wide-ranging sources to expose the fears, anxieties, and social possibilities of the Renaissance marketplace and to show the impact of these attitudes on developing urban spaces. She considers transient forms of sales such as fairs, auctions, and lotteries as well as consumers themselves. Finally, she explores antiquities and indulgences, both of which posed dramatic challenges to contemporary notions of market value and to the concept of commodification itself.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"'To reconstruct the activity of shopping in the Renaissance, Welch deploys an extraordinarily wide range of material... Her valuable book offers the reader an acute insight into the origins of our present-day consumer culture.' RA Magazine 'outstanding... written with such a pace that you're hooked before you have a chance to feel scared by the scholarship.' Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian 'An innovative work of social history... Renaissance Italy's fragmented nature, and the fact that much modern scholarship remains parochial and focused on individual centres, makes the breadth of this study one of its most original features... An original and handsome volume.' Fabrizio Nevola, The Burlington Magazine 'Welch's painstaking analysis of often quite disparate archival and visual evidence is quite masterful... An engaging, illuminating, and wide-ranging book... A visual feast.' Catherine Kovesi, Renaissance Quarterly" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Evelyn Welch is professor of Renaissance studies, Queen Mary, University of London, and was formerly reader in the history of art, University of Sussex. She is the author of Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan, published by Yale University Press, and of Art in Renaissance Italy.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300107528
• ISBN-13: 978-0300107524
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,468,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Familiar View of an Unfamiliar Locale, January 18, 2006

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This review is from: Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400-1600 (Hardcover)

Given that much of the lives of us relatively wealthy people is devoted to finding things to buy and then buying them, it is fun to find out how people of different ages and places arranged financial transactions to keep their lives going. It's no surprise that they did a lot differently in Italy five hundred years ago, and not much of a surprise that much is the same. In _Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400 - 1600_, Evelyn Welch has drawn on letters, legal records, paintings, price lists, inventories, architectural plans, and a wide range of other sources to make this basic human activity visible. A problem is that it remains largely invisible; those Italians didn't shop mindlessly, but almost instinctively as we do, with the intricacies of social values involved well below the level of consciousness. Shopping can be opened up, Welch shows, to show the society's thinking and its emphasis on themes like artisanship, labor, honest dealing, and social strata.

In Renaissance Italy, shopping was fraught with possibilities of sin. One Lenten sermon reminded hearers that shopping involved misuse of the time God had sacredly granted us, and involved usury. Merchants would habitually do such things as claim their goods were better than they actually were, perhaps even swearing oaths in verification, or they would use false measures. They might even dress misleadingly; in Venice, for instance, it was illegal for a merchant to dress as a peasant to fool buyers that the offered produce was home grown, and those who were re-selling goods on behalf of others were to wear a red "R" on their clothing for _revenditrice_. Dressing wrong was an offense to God: "O merchant," ran one sermon, "if you wish to appear as a merchant, then wear the garment that is made for you." Governments and churches supported efforts to have true weights and measures. This was often difficult, as even within one market merchants would use different measuring systems, and measurements and coinage varied from city to city. It was important for such transactions to be visible, so that both sides would have reason to keep honest, but also would keep to their places. The standard shop was open but had a counter in the front of it; the counter might directly face the street. There was no door or other barrier to prevent a customer from going behind the counter, but it just wasn't done. The customer had to ask to see the goods on display in the shop behind, and the vendor would bring them to the counter, starting the transaction.

Who did the shopping? Decent women did not, at least usually. They sent courtiers out to do it, and the courtiers were generally men. The Marchioness of Mantua wrote to her servant Zigliolo in 1491, "These are the kind of things that I wish to have - engraved amethysts, rosaries of black, amber and gold, blue cloth for a camora, black cloth for a mantle, such as shall be without a rival in the world." The household accounts and expenditures were the work of the men, too. A review of account books in Florence shows that only men kept the books, except for widows that no longer had a man to do it for them. Wives, after a few years of marriage, were allowed to make small-scale decisions about buying day-to-day items, but they still did not interact with the sellers; of course, women of lower status had to do such face-to-face negotiations and did not risk dishonor. Welch's book is a detailed academic work, but given the topic, there is liveliness here, emphasized by the many gorgeous illustrations of sellers and buyers in action, and the goods which made it all happen.