The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society

Martines, Lauro

doi:10.2307/2901668

Renaiss. Q.

1998

DOI: 10.2307/2901668

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The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society

Lauro Martines

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Cited by 9 publications

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“…According to Martines, ‘Renaissance’, p. 198, ‘the condition of the Italian economy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries remains an open question’.…”

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Italy in the Renaissance: a leading economy in the European context, 1350–1550

Malanima

2017

The Economic History Review

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A well‐known debate on the Renaissance economy was held in this journal in 1962–4 between Roberto S. Lopez and Harry Miskimin on one hand and Carlo M. Cipolla on the other. More than half a century later, this topic can be reconsidered in the light of much wider information on the late medieval/early modern Italian economy. Using data on population, urbanization, prices, wages, and GDP, this article outlines the macroeconomic trends in central and northern Italy in the age of the Renaissance (1350–1550). The frequent plagues during the early Renaissance—that is, between 1348 and 1450—decimated the population, probably causing more deaths than in other European countries. Hence resources per worker increased and labour productivity, incomes, and standards of living improved remarkably. A favourable economic environment thus seems to have been a pre‐condition for the Renaissance in culture, art, and politics and the spread of new kinds of consumer demand. From the middle of the fifteenth century, living standards gradually worsened and eventually reached the low levels that had prevailed prior to the Renaissance.

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“…According to Martines, ‘Renaissance’, p. 198, ‘the condition of the Italian economy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries remains an open question’.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Italy in the Renaissance: a leading economy in the European context, 1350–1550

Malanima

2017

The Economic History Review

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“…pp. ix–xii; Martines, ‘Renaissance’; Miller, Material culture . For definitions that consider the home and built property as central to material culture, see Auslander, ‘Beyond words’, p. 1023; and essays in Cavallo and Evangelisti, eds., Domestic institutional interiors .…”

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“…8 8 Jardine, Worldly goods , pp. 121, 137–81; see the criticisms of Jardine in Martines, ‘Renaissance’. …”

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Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments¹

Cohn

2011

The Economic History Review

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Over the past decade ‘material culture’ has become a sub‐discipline of Italian Renaissance studies. This literature, however, has focused on the rich and their objects preserved in museums or reflected in paintings. In addition, the period 1300 to 1600 has been treated without attention to changes in the relationship between people and possessions. The article turns to last wills and testaments, which survive in great numbers and sink deep roots through late medieval and Renaissance cities and their hinterlands. They reveal aspirations and anxieties about things from post‐mortem repairs to farm houses to pillows of monk's wool. These aspirations changed fundamentally after the Black Death. Earlier, during the ‘commercial revolution’, ordinary merchants, artisans, and peasants on their deathbeds practised what the mendicants preached: stripping themselves of their possessions, they converted their estates to coin to be scattered among pious and non‐pious beneficiaries. After the Black Death, testators began to reverse tack, devising ever more complex legal strategies to govern the future flow of their goods. This work of the dead had larger economic consequences. By encouraging the liquidation of estates, the earlier mendicant ideology quickened the velocity of exchange, while the early Renaissance attachment to things did the opposite.

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The New Venice: Historians and Historiography in the 21st Century Lagoon

Horodowich

2004

History Compass

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Although the Renaissance is typically most closely associated with the city of Florence, recent scholarship on the history of Venice provocatively calls this connection into question. While humanism and classicism have traditionally characterized the Renaissance in Florence, historians now argue that the vibrancy of early modern culture also resulted from inc reased cross‐cultural interaction, the development of capitalism and markets, and the process of statebuilding. When one views the Renaissance in this light, Venice takes on a new importance in the early modern world as the epicenter from which the energies of the early modern world emanated. Recent Venetian scholarship also hotly debates a variety of other topics, such as gender and women's history and religious culture, all suggesting that the Venetian archives offer a particularly rich and abundant site at which to study the early modern world.

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The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Italy in the Renaissance: a leading economy in the European context, 1350–1550

Italy in the Renaissance: a leading economy in the European context, 1350–1550

Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments¹

The New Venice: Historians and Historiography in the 21st Century Lagoon

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The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Italy in the Renaissance: a leading economy in the European context, 1350–1550

Italy in the Renaissance: a leading economy in the European context, 1350–1550

Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments1

The New Venice: Historians and Historiography in the 21st Century Lagoon

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Product

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Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments¹