IMC 2011: Sessions
Session 120: Life Strategies and Models of Consumption among the Urban Working Classes in Late Medieval Italy
Monday 11 July 2011, 11.15-12.45
| Sponsor: | St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of St Andrews |
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| Organiser: | Alessia Meneghin, St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of St Andrews |
| Moderator/Chair: | Brenda M. Bolton, University of London |
| Paper 120-a | The Clientele of a Rigattiere in Late Medieval Prato: Spending Patterns and Shopping Models (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Economics - General, Economics - Urban, Social History |
| Paper 120-b | Production and Conspicuous Consumption: Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Sculptoral Commissions as Social Currency (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - Sculpture, Economics - General, Economics - Urban, Social History |
| Abstract | This session attempts to characterise the general outlook of the urban labouring classes, showing that the development of a new consumer mentality combined with their capacity for production influenced consumption among the working classes in late medieval Italy. The first paper aims to reconstruct the shopping models and spending patterns of the working-class clientele of a late 14th-century rigattiere in Prato. The second paper considers how production itself was a form of consumption for 14th- and early 15th-century Tuscan sculptors, as they subtly appropriated the commissions of their patrons through inscriptions and visual cues in order to distinguish themselves from their working-class peers and the craftsmen who worked below them. |