Overview

Shopping was as important in the Renaissance as it is today. This fascinating and original book breaks new ground in the area of Renaissance material culture, focusing on the marketplace and such related topics as middle-class to courtly consumption, the provision of foodstuffs, and the acquisition of antiquities and holy relics. The book investigates how men and women of different social classes went to the streets, squares, and shops to buy goods they needed and wanted on a daily—or a once-in-a-lifetime—basis, during the Renaissance period. Evelyn Welch draws on wide-ranging sources to expose the fears, anxieties, and social possibilities of the Renaissance marketplace and to show the impact of these attitudes on developing urban spaces. She considers transient forms of sales such as fairs, auctions, and lotteries as well as consumers themselves. Finally, she explores antiquities and indulgences, both of which posed dramatic challenges to contemporary notions of market value and to the concept of commodification itself.

Full Product Details

9780300159851

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Reviews

'To reconstruct the activity of shopping in the Renaissance, Welch deploys an extraordinarily wide range of material... Her valuable book offers the reader an acute insight into the origins of our present-day consumer culture.' RA Magazine 'outstanding... written with such a pace that you're hooked before you have a chance to feel scared by the scholarship.' Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian 'An innovative work of social history... Renaissance Italy's fragmented nature, and the fact that much modern scholarship remains parochial and focused on individual centres, makes the breadth of this study one of its most original features... An original and handsome volume.' Fabrizio Nevola, The Burlington Magazine 'Welch's painstaking analysis of often quite disparate archival and visual evidence is quite masterful... An engaging, illuminating, and wide-ranging book... A visual feast.' Catherine Kovesi, Renaissance Quarterly

Author Information

Evelyn Welch is professor of Renaissance studies, Queen Mary, University of London, and was formerly reader in the history of art, University of Sussex. She is the author of Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan, published by Yale University Press, and of Art in Renaissance Italy.

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