Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

In engaging prose, Welch (Renaissance studies, Queen Mary College, Univ. of London) assesses the cultural significance of the marketplace in Renaissance Italy. She broadly defines "marketplace" to include material objects ranging from basic foodstuffs and dry goods that everyone consumed to the antiquities and works of art sought by the elite. Her narrative is divided conceptually into four sections. "Seeing Shopping" explores the images and metaphors through which contemporaries represented the experience of the marketplace. "The Geography of Expenditure" details the spatial and temporal frameworks within which exchanges regularly took place. "Acquisition and Excitement" appraises the significance of fairs, auctions, and lotteries, and the fourth section, "Renaissance Consumers," surveys the diverse shopping practices of men and women from various social strata. A brief conclusion suggests that the concept of the "priceless" destabilized 16th-century discourses about two disparate commodities: antiquities and indulgences. Throughout, Welch highlights the complexity of Renaissance consumer culture and its distinctness from that of today. Adorned with over 200 illustrations, including some stunning full-page color plates, this book is quite a bargain at its asking price. Every library should snap up a copy. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. K. Gouwens University of Connecticut

Author notes provided by Syndetics

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.