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The Arte dei rigattieri (merchants of second-hand goods in Florence) has never been ¿¿the subject of a systematic study, even in scholarship devoted to the history of trades. Underpinned by a large collection of archival material, this book analyzes the social life and economic activity of rigattieri in fifteenth-century Florence. It offers invaluable information on issues such as the relationship between socio-political affiliations and economic interest as well as the structures of consumption and the spending power of different social groups. Furthermore, through the lens of the Arte dei Rigattieri, this work examines the connection between the development of the political bureaucracy, the establishment of Medicean power, and contemporaneous processes of identity construction and social mobility.
List of contents
Part I: The Guild, Identity of Artifices and Economic Activities 1. Methods and Problems in the Study of the Guild of Second-Hand Dealers in Florence 2. The Structure of the Guild and Statutes 3. The Rigattieri in the Socio-Economic System of Fifteenth-Century Florence Part II: Work, Investments and Social Mobility 4. Credit, Concurrent Activities and the Appraisal of Goods 5. Land Ownership, Investments and Profits 6. From Sellers of Old Rags to the Urban Elite. Conclusions
About the author
Alessia Meneghin is the author of a book on the Tuscan Misericordie and co-editor of two volumes on Domestic Devotions. Her publications on Renaissance Italy and Tuscany explore issues of wet-nursing, food, credit, objects and practices of devotion, miracles, consumption, identity and social mobility of the Arti Minori.
Summary
Through the study of the professional trade association of the rigattieri (second-hand dealers), this book explores the identity, social mobility, and the gradual acquisition of power of those belonging to the low and lower-middle strata of early Renaissance Florentine society.
