Apprenticeship in early modern Europe has been the subject of important research in the last decades, mostly by economic historians; but the majority of the research has dealt with cities or countries in Northern Europe. The organization, evolution and purpose of apprenticeship in Southern Europe are much less studied, especially for the early modern period. The research in this volume is based on a unique documentary source: more than 54,000 apprenticeship contracts registered from 1575 to 1772 by the "Old Justice", a civil court of the Republic of Venice in charge of guilds and labour disputes.
An archival source of such scale provides a unique opportunity to historians, and this is the first time that primary research on apprenticeship is leveraging such a large amount of data in one of the main economic centres of early modern Europe. This book brings together multiple perspectives, including social history, economic history and art history, and is the outcome of an interdisciplinary collaboration between historians and computer scientists.
Apprenticeship, Work, Society in Early Modern Venice will appeal to students and researchers alike interested in the nature of work and employment in Venice and Italy, as well as society in early modern Europe more generally.
About the Author: Anna Bellavitis is Professor of Early Modern History and Director of the History Research Group (GRHIS UR 3831) at the University of Rouen, France. She has published extensively on gender and family history and on labour and urban history, and has directed numerous international research projects in collaboration with European universities and institutions. Her recent publications include Women's work and rights in Early Modern urban Europe, London, Palgrave Macmillan 2018; What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present, Oxford, New York, Berghahn Books, 2018, edited with Raffaella Sarti and Manuela Martini.
Valentina Sapienza obtained her PhD at the Ca' Foscari University Venice and at University François Rabelais in Tours in 2011. She was Lecturer at the University of Lille (2012-2018) and since 2018 she has been Associate Professor of Early Modern Art History at Ca' Foscari University in Venice. She has founded (2019) and directs the Centro Studi RiVe (Centre for Advanced Studies on Renaissance Venice Figurative Culture: www.unive.it/pag/41456). Her research focuses on Venetian Renaissance paintings and in her recent publications we remember La chiesa di San Zulian a Venezia. Dalla ricostruzione sansoviniana alle grandi imprese decorative di fine secolo, Rome, Éditions de l'École française de Rome, 2018.With Anna Bellavitis and Frédéric Kaplan, she was the PI of the international research project GAWS: Garzoni Apprenticeship, Work and Society in Early Modern Venice, 16th-18th centuries.
