HSTY2647 Renaissance Italy: The Renaissance in Italy

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HSTY2647 Renaissance Italy The Renaissance in
Italy The Artisan Culture of the Early Renaissanc
e
Petrus Christus, Saint Eligius in his workshop
(1449)
(Eligius was a goldsmith)
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Relevant readings from your set texts

• Gene A. Brucker. Renaissance Florence.
  University of California Press, 1969. Reprinted
  1983. 240-255.
  
• Lauro Martines. Power and Imagination.
  City-States in Renaissance Italy. Johns Hopkins
  UP, 1979. Reprinted 1988. 244-249.

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This lecture will investigate the role of the
artisan in the early Renaissance what kind of
position he occupies politically, economically
and socially. This issue has been of interest
lately, as the history of the non-elite has
become an area of intense study.
Recent studies of artisan culture have not alway
s turned up the kind of issues we would assume.
In Renaissance Italy, the artisan occupied a
different kind of position in society to the one
that we generally assign artisans today. They
dont have unlimited economic freedom but they
probably have access to an education and they
also often have political opportunities.
Socially, artisans can be the conduits of new and
important innovations (both artistic and
intellectual). There are issues that we need to
keep in mind with this kind of investigation
the most important is the kind of source that we
have to extrapolate information from. We have
- income tax returns (which allow us to work out
who artisans worked for) - personal memoirs writt
en by them (which allow us to get a sense of
their family life) - sometimes we have records of
commissions they carried out (or commissions
themselves, like work done in major buildings)
- we have records of guild meetings in which they
participate (which can help us figure out their
political role)
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• There are still things to consider the work
  artisans did is not necessarily regarded as art
  today, and therefore it has not always been
  considered worth preserving. This means a lot of
  artisanal products no longer survive (shoes, for
  example, or even the kind of intricate work done
  by woodworkers).
• And what about someone like an orpellaio? He is
  definitely an artisan, but the job that he did
  (beating gold or working it into gold thread) was
  part of another enterprise (in this case, making
  silk). Records about his particular role in that
  process might be non-existent, or they may only
  tell us how much product he provided, how much it
  cost, and to whom it was provided. Theres some
  detective work involved and sometimes, there
  may not be anything.
• Today we seem to think of artisans in one of two
  ways as modest workers (a vague idea) or as
  highly-specialised craftsmen.
  
• In Renaissance Italy, the status of the artisan
  is quite different. Artisans are generally
  included in the guild structure, and therefore
  play a political role. If we think back to what
  we said about Medicean patronage, for example,
  artisans are an important group drawn into those
  networks they must have some kind of political
  clout for this to bring the Medici a civic
  return, as it were.
• How does one become an artisan? Generally boys
  are born into a craft. There are a number of
  reasons for practising the same craft as your
  father, uncle or grandfather
• - free in-house training
• - the passing on of an important body of
  knowledge about a craft
  
• - free guild membership (fees were waived for men
  whose fathers belonged to the guild)

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Clockwise from below Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth
of John the Baptist (1480s) Benedetto da Maiano,
pulpit in Santa Croce, Florence (1470s) Giovanni
della Robbia, lavabo (1498)

• Its also part of family memorialisation
  continuing a family tradition and building a
  family profile (particularly if you are
  professionally successful). Thus certain families
  become associated with certain crafts
• - the Ghirlandaio family are an important
  workshop of artists, for example
  
• - the Della Robbia family have a tradition of
  working with terracotta
  
• the Da Maiano brothers are sought-after
  stonemasons
  
• By continuing a family trade, you consolidate
  your familys identity. Nevertheless, boys do
  break away from the family profession to exercise
  a new craft education can give them the
  possibility of this (remember what we said about
  communal schools, last week). We said that
  Petrarch comes from a family of notaries, but
  doesnt practise similarly, Luca Della Robbia
  breaks away from family tradition and starts a
  successful ceramics workshop.
• On all this, see Margaret Haines, Artisan Family
  Strategies Proposals for Research on the
  Families of Florentine Artists, Art, Memory, and
  Family in Renaissance Florence, ed. Giovanni
  Ciappelli and Patricia Lee Rubin (Cambridge
  Cambridge University Press, 2000), 163-175.

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• What about an artisans education? Communal
  schools were set up precisely for people like
  artisans sons. It was acknowledged that a) they
  would need certain skills for their profession
  (architects and sculptors need some knowledge of
  maths, for example) and that b) they would take
  an active part in the citys political life
  (which requires skills like rhetoric, and
  therefore basic Latin). Education also depends on
  the kind of guild your family belongs to if you
  are an orpellaio or gold beater, you belong to
  the Arte della Seta or Silk Guild, for example.
  This is one of the most important guilds in
  Florence, for example. So if you are destined for
  that guild, it is even more likely that you will
  attend school. (And this is the case for most of
  central-northern Italy.)
• We can see this education in the way artisans
  work. Think about Marco Parentis description of
  a belt in the documents in your reader on art
  patronage. In order to design and then explain
  the imagery of that belt, Marco Parenti needed a
  high level of education. There were complicated
  allusions to classical imagery, a sophisticated
  design, etc. Some of these things would have been
  learned in the classroom (history and literature,
  for example) and some would have been picked up
  in the workshop (principles of design). A
  goldsmith who makes a complicated and intricate
  reliquary (object for putting a saints relics
  in) has to be able to sketch well, for example.

Compare a goldsmiths intricate church of the
belltower on Florences badia (left), with a
reliquary (below) good design skills are needed
for both
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Santa Maria del Fiore, the Florentine cathedral
the artisans in the story of the Fat Woodworker
were all involved in its construction
And this work is respected we get a sense of
this respect in certain documents. Antonio
Manettis novella The Fat Woodworker is a good
example. A certain group of men in Florence
decide to convince their friend the fat
woodworker, a nice man but not necessarily very
quick on the uptake that he doesnt exist. They
put a careful plan into action where they
convince him that he isnt himself, that hes
actually somebody else! Not only does this stor
y give us a window into the psychology of the
time (here, one mans existential crisis!) it
also reveals to us how artisans interacted, what
kind of status they had, how they operated in and
were perceived by society. It is not just any
group of workers it includes some of the citys
most important and most well-respected artisans
working on the cathedral of Santa Maria del
Fiore, the most significant artistic and civic
project in this period. The citys best
architects and engineers, woodworkers,
stonemasons, painters, etc. were needed to
construct the building and decorate it
appropriately. When Manetti, the author,
describes this group of people he says there were
painters, goldsmiths, sculptors, woodworkers and
similar artisans. Among them was Filippo di Ser
Brunellesco i.e. Brunelleschi, the architect of
the cathedral. The suggestion here is that t
hese kind of artisans got together even though
they worked in different media and discussed
current projects. They know and respect one
another, professionally and socially.
Brunelleschi the most important architect of
his time is described as being very close
friends with the fat woodworker. Theres
obviously respect there perhaps a slight
difference in status and professional reputation
but these people associate with each other.
There is a professional camaraderie and respect.
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• This can translate to the kind of social role
  artisans play, too. Weve talked about
  confraternities (lay devotional organisations)
  at first these dont necessarily have one focus
  (i.e. people of the same status, people in the
  same economic position, people exercising the
  same trade). When confraternities do start to
  become more specialised over time (which they do
  throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth
  centuries), one of the first ways they start to
  concentrate on one thing is by profession. In
  Florence, we have the Compagnia di San Luca
  (confraternity of Saint Luke) set up as a
  confraternity for painters. Its starting to
  serve two functions a spiritual club, but also
  some kind of a professional organisation.
• Geographically, artisans often occupy a
  particular place. There are different parts of
  the city where certain professions operate. The
  government legislated this probably for the sake
  of convenience but also to create a healthy sense
  of competition and to be able to keep an eye on
  people of a certain profession.
• But certain trades congregated in certain areas
  of the city before this legislation anyway. It
  might depend on materials needed for a certain
  job those who worked with fabrics were
  frequently clustered around a river (in Tuscany,
  the Arno) because rivers were needed to produce
  the material. In Florence, butchers had to have
  their shops on the Ponte Vecchio, or old
  bridge, over the River Arno. Later on Grand Duke
  Cosimo decided that they were too noisy and
  dirty, and he had them moved off the bridge and
  replaced with the gold and silversmiths who are
  still there today. Previously they had had to
  operate in a small area near the Piazza
  Signoria.
• In Venice, glassworkers have to work on the
  island of Murano theyre not allowed to work
  anywhere else, so they end up living there too.
  See Dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani The
  Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance
  State (Baltimore/London Johns Hopkins UP, 1987),
  chapter four, The World of Work, for an
  analysis of how artisans lived and worked in
  Renaissance Venice.

Above the Arno river, Florence. Below the Ponte
Vecchio or old bridge
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• On workshops, see John T. Paoletti and Gary M.
  Radke, Art in Renaissance Italy (London Laurence
  King, 2001), 27-41.
  
• So in Florence, for example, the main artisanal
  professions (generally those that fall under the
  watchful eye of the big guilds) have to exercise
  their profession in a certain spot, usually a
  prominent one. This says something about the
  prestige of an individual profession and the
  power of that trade. But smaller guilds dont
  necessarily operate under the same restrictions.
  For this reason we have certain areas of the city
  that are very active as far as artisanal work
  goes it might be quite varied but its
  concentrated activity. One of the best examples
  of this is in the parish of San Frediano, in the
  Oltrarno (which means the other side of the Arno
  river), in the District of the Green Dragon.
  This neighbourhood is particularly interesting
  it has one or two important families, but also a
  lot of poorer, working-class families as well as
  professional or artisanal families. Theyre all
  living together and working together and as
  well consider in the second lecture helping
  one another out.
• On this kind of a neighbourhood which does seem
  to be reasonably unique, as far is Florence is
  concerned, see Nicholas A. Eckstein, The District
  of the Green Dragon Neighbourhood Life and
  Social Change in Renaissance Florence (Florence
  Oischki, 1995).