Looking at the
Renaissance
Economic and
political context
Inspirational as much
Renaissance art and literature remains, it is unwise to be too idealistic about
the circumstances of its production. For Lisa Jardine the Renaissance she
explores in Worldly Goods is one 'in which money plays a large part'.
The concept of magnificentia was central to Renaissance thinking;
conspicuous expenditure on magnanimous gestures, including the patronage of art
and scholarship, was evidence of virtue, of a greatness of soul. Those who held
or aspired to authority could justify their claims by just such an expenditure,
and competitive consumption came to be the order of the day, as each sought to
demonstrate that his (or very occasionally her) cultural credentials were of
the highest order. It is a brutal way of looking at the period, but a realistic
one.
Urban economy
and government
Cities and towns were centres of wealth production and of creativity. Urban
society in the Renaissance period was thoroughly commercialized; everything had
a price. There were two particularly dense areas of urbanization, North Italy
and the Low Countries, which acted as the main hubs for international trade in
commodities such as wool and woollen cloth, silk, tapestries, spices, silver
and fine armour. With the invention of printing Venice came also to be the
centre of the European book trade, ideas travelling rapidly via the
well-established commercial network. The Renaissance prince, the aspirant
courtier or socially climbing merchant provided a ready market for all these
commodities, for expensive fabrics and intricately decorated armour were as
much manifestations of magnificentia as paintings or sculpture. And it
was only in the town, with its concentration of skilled artisans, that the
manufacture of luxury goods and the complex technology of book production was
possible. Commerce alone was not enough to amass the largest fortunes however;
the richest merchants acted as bankers. Italian banking houses had well
established networks in the later middle ages playing for huge stakes as
creditors to princes. By the 16th century such loans were also being advanced
by the more spectacularly wealthy merchants of the Low Countries and of German
towns where profits had been amassed on the strength of the trade in silver.
Expenditure was not just a
personal matter; it was a matter of corporate status as well. European cities
expressed their sense of corporate pride and identity in public buildings,
secular and ecclesiastical. Cities experienced various degrees of autonomy.
Claiming the most independence were the few remaining city republics of north
Italy, though they were not republics in the sense that we understand the term
today. Venice had the most clearly articulated hierarchy: a closed caste of
nobility; a broader body of citizens; the plebians at the bottom of the pile.
Power was restricted to members of the nobility who made sure that public
building and public spectacle constantly broadcast the virtues of the Venetian
state, the unparalleled blessings it brought, the sanctity of the city. Equally
conscious of its virtue was the Florentine republic. This too was effectively
run by a wealthy elite increasingly dominated by the Medici. The Medici,
however, were very canny operators in the 15th century and expressed their
magnificentia in public works which ostensibly demonstrated their
loyalty to the Republic; only within their palaces, in rooms to which just the
privileged had access, was the scale of their ambition fully represented in the
art they purchased.
The autonomy of cities and
towns varied from state to state. Within the Holy Roman Empire towns might have
a considerable degree of independence, for the Empire was a loose confederation
of some hundreds of different political units, some of them independent cities.
The lack of a centralising bureaucracy in the Empire contrasts with the highly
centralised monarchy in England, where, London excepted, towns had little
autonomy. But all cities and towns possessed certain shared characteristics:
collective authority exercised by a group which was selected or elected, and
not hereditary. Usually this meant control by a wealthy elite of magistrates,
who influenced by humanist values, liked to think of themselves as patricians.
The public buildings they had erected in their cities both reflected and served
to create this image of themselves.
Economic organisation
within towns was usually through guilds. Although guilds were intended to
protect the employment of members it would be a mistake to equate them with
trade unions. Guilds had a strongly religious dimension within Catholic Europe,
giving spiritual solidarity through their brotherhood, or confraternity. And
guilds were very hierarchical in organisation, both internally and in the
relationship between guilds. Within the guild masters protected their position
against apprentices and journeymen, the very small scale of most industry
facilitating this kind of control. Indeed printing was one of the few
industries where more than a handful of people were employed in each production
unit. Relationships between guilds were also far from equal. Merchants belonged
to elite guilds whose economic power was protected by the urban government
(which of course they constituted) or the state; artisans belonged to less
prestigious guilds which had far less stake in urban government and whose
activities were closely overseen by the urban magistrates.
Associated image links
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The court
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