This blog accompanies the Historical Journal article The materiality of marriage in the artisan community of Renaissance Verona by Zoe Farrell

During the sixteenth century, Verona was a city of commerce, culture and consumption. Although ruled by the Venetian Empire, Verona had developed independently as a ‘gateway’ to the rest of Europe, transmitting Renaissance culture through the circulation of material commodities.  When looking through the small dotal inventory of the wife of a spinner, taken in the city in 1596, it is possible to find many of the necessary material items one might expect to find within a comfortable household. There was, for example, a bed, a couple of chests made of walnut wood, and a variety of kitchen utensils. However, what is more striking about this inventory is the inclusion of a number of luxurious items. In addition to the more practical objects there was also an expensive silk cover for the bed and a doublet made of black cloth with a silk blend. Following this, the inventory lists a colourful crimson gown, as well as one in azure, and another made of a fine silk fabric. At only one page long, this small dotal inventory includes various luxury items; such items which have long characterised the biographies of the Renaissance elite. However, what has remained under-explored is how the makers of material artefacts themselves engaged with the emerging trends and cultures of the Renaissance.

In recent years historians such as Sandra Cavallo, Paula Hohti and Isabella Palumbo Fossati Casa have placed a greater emphasis on the importance of studying the materiality of the non-elite. Building on such work, this article investigates the domestic material culture of the artisan community through an analysis of 100 dotal inventories from the wives and daughters of artisans in sixteenth-century Verona. Making fresh use of these sources, this article demonstrates how dotal inventories can shed light on the domestic material culture of the non-elite.

Within these inventories, we are given an insight into the essential, the decorative and the devotional in ‘ordinary’ Renaissance homes in a city outside of the major centres of Venice, Florence and Rome. This article argues that even in provincial cities such as Verona, artisans were able to have within their homes vast numbers of commodities, which were often at once practical, luxurious and devotional, and that functioned to increase both the comfort and splendour of the household. What is made clear through this analysis is that artisans often inhabited a world of goods, some of which had practical or financial functions, and some of which could be used to enhance reputation in an increasingly status-conscious society. This article adds a new body of evidence to the field, arguing that artisans played an active role in the growing market for consumer goods in sixteenth-century Italy.

Free access to the full article

Main image credit: Marriage feast from The Story of Esther by Marco del Buono Giamberti Rogers Fund, 1918