Apprenticeship, Work, Society in Early Modern Venice

305 Pages·2023·14.392 MB·English

by  Anna Bellavitis, Valentina Sapienza

Apprenticeship, Work, Society
in Early Modern Venice
Apprenticeship in early modern Europe has been the subject of important research
in the last several decades, mostly by economic historians; but the majority of the
research has dealt with cities or countries in Northern Europe. The organization,
evolution and purpose of apprenticeship in Southern Europe are much less studied,
especially for the early modern period. The research in this volume is based on a
unique documentary source: more than 54,000 apprenticeship contracts registered
from 1575 to 1772 by the “Old Justice”, a civil court of the Republic of Venice in
charge of guilds and labour disputes.
An archival source of such scale provides a unique opportunity to historians,
and this is the first time that primary research on apprenticeship is leveraging
such a large amount of data in one of the main economic centres of early modern
Europe. This book brings together multiple perspectives, including social history,
economic history and art history, and is the outcome of an interdisciplinary
collaboration between historians and computer scientists.
Apprenticeship, Work, Society in Early Modern Venice will appeal to students
and researchers alike interested in the nature of work and employment in Venice
and Italy, as well as society in early modern Europe more generally.
Anna Bellavitis is Professor of Early Modern History and Director of the History
Research Group (GRHIS UR 3831) at the University of Rouen, France. She has
published extensively on gender and family history and on labour and urban
history, and has directed numerous international research projects in collaboration
with European universities and institutions. Her recent publications include
Women’s work and rights in Early Modern urban Europe, London, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018; What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family and
Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present, Oxford, New York, Berghahn
Books, 2018, edited with Raffaella Sarti and Manuela Martini.
Valentina Sapienza obtained her PhD at the Ca’ Foscari University Venice and at
University François Rabelais in Tours in 2011. She was Lecturer at the University
of Lille (2012–2018) and since 2018 she has been Associate Professor of Early
Modern Art History at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. She founded (2019) and
directs the Centro Studi RiVe (Centre for Advanced Studies on Renaissance Venice
Figurative Culture: www.unive.it/pag/41456). Her research focuses on Venetian
Renaissance paintings and in her recent publications we remember La chiesa
di San Zulian a Venezia. Dalla ricostruzione sansoviniana alle grandi imprese
decorative di fine secolo, Rome, Éditions de l’École française de Rome, 2018.
With Anna Bellavitis and Frédéric Kaplan, she was the PI of the international
research project GAWS: Garzoni Apprenticeship, Work and Society in Early
Modern Venice, 16th–18th centuries.
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Apprenticeship, Work, Society in Early Modern Venice
Edited by Anna Bellavitis and Valentina Sapienza
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-
Research-in-Early-Modern-History/book-series/RREMH
Apprenticeship, Work, Society
in Early Modern Venice
Edited by Anna Bellavitis
and Valentina Sapienza
First published 2023
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Anna Bellavitis and
Valentina Sapienza; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Anna Bellavitis and Valentina Sapienza to be identified as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-05351-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-05353-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19719-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003197195
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of figures ix
List of tables xi
List of contributors xii
Introduction 1
ANNA BELLAVITIS AND VALENTINA SAPIENZA
PART 1
The state of the art 5
1 Apprenticeship, society and economy in early modern Europe 7
ANNA BELLAVITIS
2 The apprenticeship of artists during the Renaissance:
a bibliographical note 21
MICHEL HOCHMANN
PART 2
The Garzoni project 33
3 From archival sources to structured historical information:
annotating and exploring the Accordi dei Garzoni 35
MAUD EHRMANN, ORLIN TOPALOV AND FRÉDÉRIC KAPLAN
 4  Normalisation and classification of trade and craft names: 
a history of Venetian professions 53
FRANCESCA ZUGNO
vi Contents
5 From documentary sources to geographical entities:
premises for a geography of apprenticeship in the early
modern period 77
JACOPO COSSU
6 A data set for historians 101
ANNA BELLAVITIS AND VALENTINA SAPIENZA
PART 3
Apprenticeship in early modern Venice 167
7 The “Accordi dei Garzoni”: the origin and evolution of the
apprenticeship contract in Venice 169
ANDREA ERBOSO
8 The “unregulated” apprenticeship of Venetian mercers
(16th–17th centuries) 182
EMILIE FIORUCCI
9 Apprenticeship, training and work in the Venetian inns
and bastioni (16th–18th centuries) 198
MATTEO POMPERMAIER
10 Data analysis and case studies about the professions
of the Fraglia 218
JACOPO COSSU AND VALENTINA SAPIENZA
11 Fathers, sons and apprentices in the goldsmiths’ and
jewellers’ guild (16th–18th centuries) 248
FRANCESCA STOPPER
12 Conclusion 270
ANNA BELLAVITIS AND VALENTINA SAPIENZA
Index 274
Acknowledgements
Having come to the end of this work, we feel the need to sincerely thank all those
who contributed to the realisation of this project.
First of all, Frédéric Kaplan, Director of the DHLab at the Ecole Polytech-
nique Fédérale de Lausanne, and his team – in particular, Maud Erhmann, Orlin
Topalov and Giovanni Colavizza, who accompanied us with great competence
and patience, welcoming our point of view with openness, attention and interest.
We would like to thank the University of Lille and in particular the IRHiS Lab-
oratory (Institut de Recherches Historiques du Septentrion UMR 8529) for having
believed in and supported the project idea of a young and inexperienced maîtresse
de conférences, and for providing its funds to finance a feasibility study, which
then allowed us to build the ANR project. Our heartfelt thanks therefore go to the
director (at the time), Sylvie Aprile, and the directors who followed her, Stéphane
Michonneau and Charles Mériaux, as well as the entire administrative team of the
laboratory – in particular, Martine Aubry, Christine Aubry and Martine Duhamel.
A heartfelt thank you to the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société
Lille Nord de France and Janis Monchet, whose support was indispensable for
the financing of the feasibility study and the construction of the project proposal
for the ANR call.
Special thanks to François Delisle, ingénieur d’étude of the GRHIS UR
3831 (Groupe de Recherche d’Histoire) Laboratory of the University of Rouen-
Normandie for his contribution to data processing and to the IRIHS (Institut de
Recherche Interdisciplinaire Homme Société) for the administrative follow-up of
the project.
Thanks to all the institutions and colleagues who invested in this project both
financially and scientifically: to the Agence Nationale de la Rercherche and the
Fonds National Suisse, without whose generous financial support we would never
have been able to complete this project; to the Archivio di Stato di Venezia – in
particular, to the former directors Raffaele Santoro, Giovanna Giubbini and Gianni
Penzo-Doria, the archivists Michela Dal Borgo, Alessandra Schiavon and Andrea
Erboso, and all the officials and staff who have shown care and attention to our
project; to the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice and in particular to the Institute
of Art History and its director, Luca Massimo Barbero, and to Simone Guerriero;
to the University of Venice and in particular Martina Frank and Luciano Pezzolo,
viii Acknowledgements
who immediately believed in this work and made a valuable contribution to the
research; to the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and Michel Hochmann, without
whose fundamental contribution our research, particularly in the field of art his-
tory, would certainly have been poorer; to the University of Warwick and Giorgio
Tagliaferro for supporting Garzoni and providing his expertise on art workshops.
Also: to the University of Rijeka and colleagues Nina Kudis and Damir Tulic, and
to the University of Ljubljana and colleague Matej Klemencic.
Thanks to our incomparable “Garzoni team”: to the first among them: Davide
Drago, Andrea Erboso and Francesca Zugno, who invested their time with gener-
osity and dedication, even before the project was financed by the Agence Nation-
ale de la Rercherche and the Fonds National Suisse, enabling us to carry out a
feasibility study that formed the indispensable basis for subsequent developments.
Thanks again to Lucia Corazza, Claudio Lorenzini, Francesca Stopper and Gloria
Zuccarello. A special thanks goes to Jacopo Cossu, who not only worked on the
compilation of the database with his young colleagues but also made available to
us, with priceless generosity and in the collective interest, his extraordinary skills,
without which we would not have been able to perfect our statistical analyses and
produce the graphical elaborations.
Heartfelt thanks also go to the many friends and colleagues who have gen-
erously contributed to this research in various capacities: Mauro Bondioli, Isa-
bella Cecchini, Bert De Munck, Emilie Fiorucci, Gianmario Guidarelli, Simona
Laudani, Corine Maitte, Antonio Manno, Monica Martinat, Luca Molà, José
Nieto, Camille Perez, Matteo Pompermaier, Angels Solà Parera, Francesco Tren-
tini, Patrick Wallis.
Figures
3.1 Home page of the DHCanvas web application: https:garzoni.org 36
3.2 Segmentation and annotation of Garzoni contract 41
3.3 The DHCanvas annotation model 43
3.4 Validation interface to correct annotation 45
3.5 Dynamic contextual information to support entity linking 46
3.6 Screenshot showing the search results for the query
“tagiapiera#apprentice@Giovanni” 48
3.7 Person Mention filter 49
3.8 Partial view of a contract notice 50
4.1 Professions in a contract of apprenticeship 54
4.2 Level 0: economic sectors (only apprentices) 62
4.3 Level 1: the 15 most representative categories (only apprentices) 64
4.4 Level 2: The most representative subcategories of commercio
all’ingrosso e al minute (only apprentices) 65
4.5 Francesco Griselini, “Orti da cera”, Dizionario delle Arti e de’
mestieri, tav. 1 68
4.6 Gaetano Zompini, Le arti che vanno per via nella città di
Venezia, 1785, “Coro d’orbi”, tav. 44 70
5.1 Distribution of geographical origins by role 78
5.2 Work steps 79
5.3 Frontispieces of Repertorio generale delle ville, e comuni di
tutte le province della Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia,
Venice, 1769, and Pietro Marchettano, Nomi delle città,
terre, fortezze, castelli, et ville de la Patria del Friuli con gli
Giusdicenti, Udine, 1635 85
5.4 Projection of the Garzoni’s places on T. Dankerts, Novissima
et accuratissima totius Italiae Corsicae et Sardiniae descriptio,
Amsterdam, c. 1684 88
5.5 Natale Bonifacio, Tripoli di Sorio in Jean Zuallart, Devotissimo
viaggio di Gerusalemme, Rome, 1587 89
5.6 Paris Island in M. Boschini, L’Arcipelago con tutte le isole,
scogli, secche e bassi fondi, Venice, 1658 90