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Department of History

Trade, Industry and Consumption

Seminar Tutor

Luca Molà

Site Visit

Rialto. Meet at Campo San Giacomo di Rialto.

Seminar Questions

  • Why was consumption a contentious issue in Renaissance Venice?
  • How did the government attempt to control it and how effective were their efforts?
  • How did patterns of consumption change in the period?
  • How did consumption differ by gender and class?
  • To what degree was the desire for 'worldly goods' a defining feature of the Renaissance in Venice?

Key Texts

Further Reading

  • Ajmar, Marta, and Flora Dennis (eds), At Home in Renaissance Italy (London, 2006)
  • Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta, Flora Dennis, Ann Matchette, 'Approaching the Italian Renaissance interior: sources, methodologies, debates', Renaissance Studies 20 (2006), 623–28. Blackwell
  • Allerston, Patricia, 'Consuming problems: worldly goods in Renaissance Venice' in M. O'Malley and E. Welch eds, The Material Renaissance (Manchester 2007), 11-46.
  • Allerston, Patricia, ‘The Second-Hand Trade in the Arts in Early Modern Italy’, in M. Fantoni, L. C. Matthew and S.F. Matthews-Grieco (eds.), The Art Market in Italy (Modena, 2003).
  • Appleby, Joyce, ‘Consumption in Early Modern Social Thought’, in Roy Porter and John Brewer (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1993), 162–73.
  • Cavallo, Sandra, ‘The Artisan's Casa’, in M. Ajmar-Wollheim and F. Dennis (eds.), At Home in Renaissance Italy (London, 2006).
  • Findlen, Paula, 'Possessing the Past: The Material World of the Italian Renaissance', The American Historical Review, 103.1 (1998), pp. 83-114.
  • Fortini Brown, Patricia, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family (New Haven, 2004)
  • Goldthwaite, Richard A., Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600 (Baltimore, 1993)
  • Goldthwaite, Richard, A., 'The Economic and Social World of Italian Renaissance Maiolica', Renaissance Quarterly 42 (1989), 1-32. JSTOR
  • Grieco, A., "Food and social classes in late medieval and Renaissance Italy", in Flandrin and Montanari (eds), Food: A Culinary History (New York, 1999), 302-12.
  • Hinton, Jack, ‘By Sale, By Gift: Aspects of the Resale and Bequest of Goods in Late Sixteenth-Century Venice’, Journal of Design History, 15 (2002), 245–61.
  • Jardine, Lisa, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York, 1996).
  • Kovesi Killerby, C. Sumptuary law in Italy 1200-1500 (Oxford, 2002).
  • Lanaro, Paola (ed.), At the centre of the old world: trade and manufacturing in Venice and on the Venetian mainland (1400-1800) (Toronto, 2006)
  • Little, Lester K., 'Pride goes before avarice: social change and the vices in Latin Christendom', American Historical Review 76 (1971): 16-49.
  • Matchette, Ann, ‘Credit and Credibility: Used Goods and Social Relations in Sixteenth-Century Florence’, in Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch (eds.), The Material Renaissance (Manchester, 2007), 225–41.
  • Martines, Lauro, ‘The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society’, Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998), 193-203. JSTOR
  • Rosenthal, Margaret F., 'Clothing, Fashion, Dress, and Costume in Venice (c.1450–1650)', in Dursteler, A Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797 (Leiden, 2013), pp. 889-928.
  • Rublack, Ulinka, 'Matter in the Material Renaissance', Past & Present 219 (2013): 41-84. JSTOR
  • Stuard, Susan Mosher, Gilding the market: luxury and fashion in fourteenth-century Italy (Philadelphia, 2006).
  • Welch, Evelyn, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400–1600 (New Haven, 2005)
  • Welch, Evelyn, ‘Lotteries in Early Modern Italy’, Past & Present, 199 (2008), 71–111.JSTOR

E-Resources