Shopping in the Renaissance

Book excerpt: Shopping was as important in the Renaissance as it is in the 21st century. This book breaks new ground in the area of Renaissance material culture, focussing on the marketplace in its various aspects, ranging from middle-class to courtly consumption and from the provision of foodstuffs to the acquisition of antiquities and holy relics. It asks how men and women of different social classes went out into the streets, squares and shops to buy the goods they needed and wanted on a daily or on a once-in-a-lifetime basis during the Renaissance period. Drawing on a detailed mixture of archival, literary and visual sources, she exposes the fears, anxieties and social possibilities of the Renaissance marketplace. Thereafter, Welch looks at the impact these attitudes had on the developing urban spaces of Renaissance cities, before turning to more transient forms of sales such as fairs, auctions and lotteries. In the third section, she examines the consumers themselves, asking how the mental, verbal and visual images of the market shaped the business of buying and selling. Finally, the book explores two seemingly very different types of commodities - antiquities and indulgences, both of which posed dramatic challenges to contemporary notions of market value and to the concept of commodification itself.