Introduction

In the early weeks of 1638, a melodramatic scene played out in the gardens of Siena’s Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala. Pasquino Neri, a gardener (ortolano) who worked and lived on Ospedale land near the gate of Porta Tufi in Siena, had recently died. His widow, Monica, quickly remarried. Her new husband, Giovanni, was also an Ospedale gardener, and by February of that year the couple were living together in the house that Pasquino had rented from his employer and where his possessions remained. To ensure these goods were passed on to his underage heirs, Pasquino’s adult daughter, Margherita, requested that an inventory be drawn up under the care of Siena’s Court of Wards (Curia del Placito).¹

The document suggests that Pasquino’s modest house was filled with modest things: a ‘nasty’ wooden table, a few ‘nice’ wool garments and piles of fibres to be spun into yarn. Pasquino also had a small collection of jewellery, which he kept inside a round box. This included two necklaces of coral beads and two gold rings with red stones: one with a little horseman and another with a fede, or two hands clasping.² We might expect to find this kind of jewellery among a gardener’s humble possessions, and authors of costume books describe similar items worn by the wives and daughters of men like Pasquino. In his famous costume book, for instance, Cesare Vecellio described the young women bringing fruit to market from Chioggia, just south of Venice, as wearing strings of coral or round silver beads just below a light veil draped around their necks (Figure 4.1).³

But alongside these simple pieces, Neri’s round box also held a diamond ring and a necklace of little rubies, other red stones, gold beads and misshapen pearls, with a gold enamelled cross attached to it.⁴ These precious materials are unexpected in the inventory of a labourer, and scholars have long considered costly jewellery and especially pearls to have been the preserve of the wealthy in early modern Italy. However, Pasquino’s necklace of pearls is not unique among Sienese gardeners: Angelo di Giulio possessed forty-five misshapen pearls in 1603, and Giovani Cioncolini had a ring with a pearl and a necklace of pearls and coral beads in 1649.⁵ Beyond Siena, an ortolano nicknamed Bechino from the parish of San Zeno in Pisa had ‘a necklace of six strands of pearls with an Agnus Dei’, as well as strings of coral, a gold fede and a rosary of incised red bone, in 1614.⁶

Figure 4.1 Cesare Vecellio, ‘Ortolane’ in Habiti antichi, et moderni di tutto il mondo (Appresso i Sessa: Venice, 1598), fol. 118r. Yale University Library, New Haven.

It was not only gardeners who earned pearls in early modern Italy but also dyers, laundresses and shoemakers. Among the 448 inventories of non-elite homes and workshops in Siena, Florence and Venice gathered by the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ project and considered here, there are over two hundred references to pearls, more than any other gemstone or semi-precious material in these documents.⁷ This chapter draws attention to the presence of pearls in jewellery boxes belonging to artisans and labourers (and on their necks, wrists and fingers, too). It shows how and why people without a great deal of wealth were able to obtain pearl necklaces, bracelets and rings.

This is important because it counters long-held, erroneous assumptions about who had access to and possessed pearls in this period. Although some scholars have stated outright that artisans and labourers did not own pearls, most who study jewellery and accessories ignore those below merchants on the socio-economic ladder.⁸ This is in part due to the absence of evidence around non-elite people’s ownership of pearls (and goods in general) in comparison with aristocrats, patricians and merchants; we cannot connect extant pieces of jewellery to butchers, shoemakers or dyers, nor do we have correspondence about the procurement of gems for gardeners, laundresses or innkeepers. But, as this chapter demonstrates, documents like household inventories as well as records from auctions, pawnshops and goldsmiths’ workshops show that artisans and labourers bought and sold pearl jewellery from various sellers at a range of prices.⁹ Finally, sumptuary laws and criminal records indicate that non-elite people did not simply lock their pearls away but wore them – sometimes illegally – on their bodies. Their desire for pearls was perhaps not so different from that of their social betters: to store wealth, demonstrate status (whether financial, social or marital) and communicate aspects of identity that were recognised and expected across society.

Inside the jewellery box

Scholars have long assumed that pearls were unattainable by all but the elite of early modern Italy, because of generalisations they have made about pearls themselves. Historians of dress and jewellery point to plump, round, white pearls represented in portraits of aristocratic women like Eleonora di Toledo – Duchess of Florence and first wife of Cosimo I de’ Medici – as well as images of unnamed patrician brides (Figure 4.2). This ignores the fact that pearls range in shape, size, colour and quality and come from different places; they therefore have (and had) varied social and monetary values.

Unlike today’s scholars, authors of early modern lapidaries and treatises on the natural world recognised and painstakingly described these differences within a sort of pearl hierarchy. The humanist Lodovico Dolce, for instance, explained in his Libri tre ne i quali si tratta delle diverse sorti delle gemme che produce la Natura (Venice, 1565):

Many early modern writers and translators ignored pearls from the Americas in their texts, despite the fact that Columbus had encountered them on his third voyage there in 1498.¹¹ The so-called ‘Pearl Coast’ of Venezuela and its neighbouring islands supplied and even overwhelmed the European market in waves over the sixteenth century, its riches celebrated in scenes like that depicted by Jacopo Zucchi (Figure 4.3).¹² According to the Flemish physician Anselm de Boodt – writing in 1609 – pearls from the Americas were ‘not so commendable as the Orientall ones’.¹³ However, when it came to price, it was not the place of origin but, in de Boodt’s words, ‘Their own glory, beauty, and excellencie amount their worth … So according to their bigness, weight, roundness, and fairnesse, their price is raised, doubled, and trebled.’¹⁴ The monetary value of a pearl was determined more by its superficial qualities than where it had come from. According to Molly Warsh, ‘Oriental’ evolved into a term for any pearls that were large, round, and smooth; they did not necessarily have to come from the east.¹⁵

Figure 4.2 Studio of Agnolo Bronzino, Eleonora di Toledo, c. 1562–72. Wallace Collection, London.

Given this hierarchy of pearls, it is unsurprising that those at the pinnacle – ‘Oriental’ pearls – appear only once in the inventories of non-elite homes considered here: a Venetian dyer in 1614 was seemingly in possession of ‘a string of 39 Oriental pearls that weighs 165 carats’.¹⁶ This entry is unusual not only for its presumed value but also for the level of detail given about the jewellery. Descriptions of pearl items in these documents are usually terse: ‘a string of pearls’, ‘a pair of earrings with pearls’ or ‘a ring with a pearl’. When documents give supplementary information about pearls, it most often relates to their shape and size, not their quality. For example, Domenico Gritti, another Venetian dyer, in 1557 had a necklace of seed pearls, or perle da onza – so-called because they were sold by the ounce rather than being individually priced like larger pearls.¹⁷ These tiny pearls appear regularly in the documents considered here, probably because they were relatively inexpensive and, in some cities, were permitted by sumptuary laws, as we shall see.

Figure 4.3 Jacopo Zucchi, The Coral Fishers, 1585. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Scaramazze, or misshapen pearls (what we call ‘Baroque’ pearls today), also appear frequently in the inventories studied here, especially on strings worn around the neck or wrists.¹⁸ For example, the inventory of the goods of the smith and mason Antonio Marini, drawn up when he died in Siena in 1608, shows he owned a necklace with four strands of seed pearls as well as a necklace of scaramazze with ten gold beads.¹⁹ Like seed pearls, scaramazze were generally less desirable than Oriental pearls and therefore less costly.²⁰

That being said, pearls – even those sold by the ounce – were not cheap. Domenico Gritti’s necklace of perle da onza was valued in the inventory of his possessions at 4 ducats, the same as an old lady’s gown of crimson satin also listed there.²¹ The dyer had a second string of ninety-four pearls, which was worth 15 ducats, the same as a crimson damask gown in his possessions.²² He also owned a string of sixty-two pearls worth 120 ducats, which was worn by his daughter-in-law. This is the most expensive single item in his household inventory; the only thing that approaches and indeed exceeds the value of the necklace is the rock alum used for fixing dye colours in his workshop, which was worth 190 ducats.²³ The price of this costly necklace would have represented about 240 days of work for a Venetian master artisan, suggesting Gritti’s elevated financial status (or his level of debt).²⁴ He was not a prince, diplomat or patrician, but he owned what would have been considered beautiful and valuable pearls.

Further household inventories demonstrate that other gardeners, dyers, smiths and masons owned pearls and pearl jewellery, too. Although most items are described in a way that suggests they were simple strings of seed or Baroque pearls, various sizes and qualities of pearl could be found even within single households. And just as there were different kinds of pearls, there were different ways they could be obtained, and for a range of prices.

Acquiring pearls

Documents related to goldsmiths’ and jewellers’ shops, auctions and pawnshops reveal that they sold a wide variety of pearls. Their customers were not necessarily restricted to the social and financial elite but included buyers with different needs and budgets. For instance, when a post-mortem inventory of the workshop of the Venetian goldsmith Domenico Redolfi was taken in June 1629, the most expensive finished piece of jewellery listed was a string of forty-seven pearls, weighing 91 carats and worth 350 ducats. In contrast, a set of forty-two unstrung pearls weighing ninety-two carats was worth only 190 ducats.²⁵ Additionally, the goldsmith had one pearl which weighed 5 carats and was worth 40 ducats, while another, which weighed only slightly less at 4 carats and 3 grains, was worth 60 ducats.²⁶ There were clearly differences in terms of the appearance, shape and quality of all these pearls not mentioned in the written descriptions.²⁷

Redolfi’s workshop also had earrings at a range of prices, including a pair made from gold wire and decorated with pearls, valued at 5 lire; four pairs with ‘sad little pearls’, worth 155 lire; and a pair with ‘nasty Scottish pearls’, worth 70 lire.²⁸ The goldsmith seems to have been able to meet demand for both costly and less expensive pearls. But even the latter were still pricy: the cheapest piece of pearl jewellery in the shop, the pair of earrings worth five lire, would have cost a master artisan in the Venetian building industry in the late 1620s a day and a half’s wages, and just over two days’ wages for an unskilled labourer. The least expensive pearl necklace in Redolfi’s shop was valued at 25 ducats, or the equivalent of around forty-eight days’ work for a master builder and around sixty-five for a labourer.²⁹

Buying pearls from goldsmiths and jewellers, therefore, could be expensive. But shoppers could also turn to the second-hand market, where pearls could be purchased from auctions and pawnshops, which served diverse groups of buyers and sellers throughout the northern Italian cities.³⁰ In Siena, for example, auctions usually took place in Piazza Comunale. It was there that the farrier Mario di Paolo Zani’s goods were auctioned off on 12 May 1646 in order to help settle the many debts he had left to his underage heirs when he died. Among the jewellery up for sale was ‘a necklace of gold beads and little pearls’ purchased by a Jewish buyer, Moise di Flaminio Galleni, for 31 lire and 19 soldi, and ‘a string of nineteen pearls’ sold to a friar for 51 lire and 19 soldi.³¹ The latter was one of the most expensive lots, and would have represented nearly a month and a half’s earnings for a Sienese barber or a notary at the time, or three months’ wages for a porter or guard, and just over that for an unskilled labourer on a building site.³² But there were also opportunities for poorer individuals to buy pearls auctioned off at much low prices: a smith paid just 6 lire for a little pearl necklace that was sold as part of a Sienese mason’s belongings in 1593.³³

In addition to the possessions of private individuals or families, auctions sometimes sold unredeemed pawns on behalf of brokers and lending institutions like the monte di pietà. Monti were established in many central and northern Italian cities so that people could pledge goods as collateral for small emergency and subsistence loans. Borrowers were usually given twelve or eighteen months to repay the debt, after which any unredeemed goods could be sold at auction.³⁴ Moneylenders also accepted jewellery and clothing as pledges, which would be sold if debts were left unpaid.³⁵ Records show that artisans both pledged and purchased pearl jewellery this way.

In Florence, for instance, Antonio Masini and Domenico Bonini operated The Little Crown (la Coroncina) as both a tavern and a pawnshop. The inventory drawn up when Bonini died in 1644 reveals that nearly all the pawned items were jewellery or other objects that had been worked by a gold- or silversmith. Most had been deposited by local people well known to the proprietors. A kitchen servant at the tavern had pledged a pair of gold earrings with pearls for 2 soldi.³⁶ There were pawns of necklaces, rings and earrings by ‘a member of the household’, an apprentice at the tavern and the Bonini family’s laundress. Even Bonini himself, according to his business partner Masini, had pawned a gold fede ring ‘that had been kept on his finger’ for 7 soldi.³⁷ Jewellery had also been pledged by a silk weaver, an apothecary and one Baldassare, ‘servant to the Princess of Massa’. The proprietors of The Little Crown offered small loans to people from a range of backgrounds. These individuals, from kitchen servants to apothecaries, pledged jewellery – which sometimes featured pearls – to secure their loans. If these were not repaid, the jewellery would be sold, and certainly at a lower price than it would cost to buy new from a goldsmith or jeweller.

However, the inventories of goldsmiths’ and jewellers’ shops indicate that in some cases they loaned money against pawned jewellery and gems as well and sold them off if their owners were unable to make their repayments on time. The Venetian goldsmith Antonio Albrici, for example, was in possession of several pawned items when he died in 1644. They were kept in separate boxes and envelopes, many of which were labelled with information about the object inside, its value and its owner. His inventory lists ‘a little string of seed pearls in a paper with a note that says “pledged for 5 lire”’, although in this case their owner’s name is unfortunately not stated.³⁸ People also left goods with Albrici as collateral for purchases of jewellery on credit, like the carpenter named Gasparo who pledged a silver spoon and fork, plus a ring set with a turquoise stone, in return for a plain ring worth 23 lire, according to the receipt kept with the deposited items.³⁹

Records like these demonstrate that there were numerous means by which people from across the social spectrum could obtain pearls and other kinds of jewellery at a range of prices. The many and varied opportunities to both buy and sell pearls enabled more than just the wealthy to own them, though they were not cheap. Pearls represented a considerable investment, but one that held its value and could be sold, pawned or traded in times of financial need.

The social significance of pearls

Like other gems and precious materials, pearls clearly functioned as stores of wealth for early modern shoppers; however, they were also desirable for their symbolic and social value. In particular, they have long been associated with marriage, often appearing in written descriptions of wedding gifts and adorning brides in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century wedding portraits. Many of these images depict or relate to members of wealthy and powerful families, thereby furthering the traditional assumption that pearls were the reserve of the elite.⁴⁰

Pearls were beautiful and emphasised the beauty of the bride, but they had symbolic meaning as well. In the early modern period, the colour white was associated with virtue and with cleanliness of body and spirit, and pearls in particular were considered a sign of purity.⁴¹ They were also emblems of chastity, due not only to their colour but also to the way that they were believed to form: oysters rose to the water’s surface to sip celestial dew, through which they conceived a pearl. The purity of the dew, the clemency of the weather and the length of gestation were all thought to determine the quality of the pearl, which the oyster would protect by biting off any fingers or hands inserted into their shells.⁴² These beliefs are recorded as far back as Pliny’s Natural History and survived well into the seventeenth century.⁴³

The idea that oysters were impregnated by the heavens with something pure was easy to connect with Christian beliefs around the Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception. The molluscs’ purported chastity was also appealing to early modern writers. Purity before and chastity during marriage were considered important virtues for brides, which the wearing of pearls both signified and reinforced. According to Cleandro Arnobio, a Venetian trader and the author of Il tesoro delle gioie (Venice, 1602), a pearl ‘renders chaste whoever wears it’.⁴⁴

This symbolism, along with the status of pearls as luxury items, is perhaps why they were a key focus of sumptuary laws in most north Italian cities in the early modern period. In fact, many of these laws started with a blanket ban on the wearing of ‘pearls of any sort, real or false’ by anyone except, usually, women of the highest rank.⁴⁵ This is perhaps why scholars often assume that people from the lower social orders were not legally allowed to own or wear pearls. But closer examination of these laws reveals that pearls were in fact permitted to the wives of artisans on certain stringently defined occasions. Combined with the establishment of distinctions based on different categories of pearls – much like those made by the authors of the lapidaries discussed earlier – it appears that such legislation was more flexible than has generally been understood.

The city of Siena, for instance, took a nuanced approach to controlling the use of pearls. Law-makers recognised that there were different types, of differing worth, and used these criteria – which shifted over time in response to trends in consumption – to determine who could wear them. In the sumptuary laws of 1576, men and women of Siena’s lower social orders were allowed to wear only one pearl – real or false – on a single finger ring worth not more than 100 scudi.⁴⁶ However, over time, the restrictions around pearls relaxed, so that in the laws of 1594:

These tiny pearls were allowed only as a single string about the neck, ‘and not in the form of a necklace of six or eight strands, in Agnus Deis, in earrings or headdresses’, and were permitted to be worn by ‘any sort of person’ except sex workers and children under seven, for whom pearls were expressly forbidden.⁴⁸ Notably, such strings of tiny pearls are frequently mentioned in non-elite inventories, as touched on earlier.

In 1599, the regulations shifted again to allow women from Siena’s ruling families (the Riseduti) to wear one string of pearls ‘at their pleasure’, while other women were limited to seed pearls sold by the ounce (minute a oncia). By the end of the sixteenth century, therefore, it was not simply the right to wear pearls that distinguished women from different social orders but their number, size and weight. The distinction between the seed pearls allowed to lower-ranking women and the larger pearls permitted to elite women would have been obvious, enabling onlookers to distinguish between women of high and low status at a glance. Inferior pearls were deemed appropriate for socially inferior people perhaps because they were cheaper or less beautiful, or both. Twenty years later, however, the Sienese laws relaxed further, so that all married women except sex workers were also allowed to wear larger pearls weighing up to 2 carats each.

In Venice, as in most other northern Italian cities, sumptuary legislation relating to pearls was more closely tied to socio-economic status than it was in Siena. Once again, though, there were usually exceptions. For instance, a special decree issued in Venice on 8 July 1599 forbade all but the dogaressa, her daughters and daughters-in-law who lived in the ducal palace from wearing pearls. There was an important concession, however: ‘any woman, whether of noble birth or a simple citizen’ was allowed to wear pearls for ‘fifteen years from the day of her first marriage’. After that, ‘this string or any other kind of pearls or anything which imitates pearls’ was no longer permitted.⁴⁹

In 1609, this grace period was reduced to ten years, because ‘the desired end has not been attained, and the extravagance has continued up to the present time and still continues with the gravest injury to private persons’.⁵⁰ And, in the decree of 1619, sex workers were also allowed to wear pearls, which further reduced the visual distinctions between Venetian women of different social orders, as highlighted by Giacomo Franco, an engraver and publisher, among others. As Franco’s costume book Habiti delle donne venetiane (Venice, 1610) explained: ‘In Venice, we find four qualities of women who dress almost in the same way. The only difference is how much jewellery they wear.’⁵¹ There were the city’s noblewomen, who surpassed all the others with the great price of their pearls; the cittadine, who bedecked themselves as if they were gentlewomen, and the merchants’ wives, who appeared little inferior; and the wives of artisans, who possessed such ‘lovely necklaces of pearls and other jewels’ that they appeared to ‘adorn themselves like wealthy foreign gentlewomen’ (Figure 4.4).⁵² Although Franco’s description cannot necessarily be taken as fact, the archival evidence discussed earlier in this chapter shows that the jewellery boxes of Venetian artisans certainly did contain ‘lovely necklaces of pearls’, which could legally be worn by their wives for at least ten years from their wedding day.

Figure 4.4 Giacomo Franco, Untitled engraving from Habiti delle donne venetiane intagliate in rame nuovamente (Venice, c. 1591–1610). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In Florence, recently married women from the lower social orders were also permitted to wear pearls. Although the sumptuary laws of 1638 prohibited ‘any woman of any state, grade or condition to use pearls [or] jewels of any sort, real or false’, there were exceptions for ‘maidens of any condition’ who were entitled to trinkets of ‘lapis lazuli, agate, coral and other similar things’.⁵³ Married women – prior to the sixth anniversary of their ‘ring day’ – could wear ‘a pearl necklace of a value up to 1,000 scudi, plus a pair of earrings and a pair of bracelets of pearl or other good gems which do not exceed the total value of 200 scudi’.⁵⁴ After this period was over, matrons were permitted ‘a necklace of any real gems, but not false, a pair of bracelets and a pair of similar earrings, as long as the value of all three of the aforesaid does not surpass 100 scudi’.⁵⁵ These concessions do not appear to have differentiated between women married to nobles, citizens or artisans: it was marital status not social rank that made pearls licit for most women in Florence. Indeed, to all intents and purposes, the wearing of pearls by a Florentine woman could safely have been taken as a sign that she was married.

Although this was the case in Florence itself, matters were different when it came to the surrounding Tuscan countryside. According to the laws of 1638, peasant women (contadine) were

Peasant women, however, did not necessarily comply with the letter of the law (compare Chapter 9). The records of the birri – the officials who patrolled the streets of Florence enforcing sumptuary regulations – reveal many instances of contadine, and indeed women of other ranks, wearing forbidden clothing and jewellery.⁵⁷ On 25 September 1639, Costanza, the wife of an ortolano, was spotted in Via Vacchereccia wearing ‘a necklace of beads and pearls and attached to it a little gold cross with pendant pearls as well as three gold rings with different stones’.⁵⁸ According to the birri, these items – including the pearls – were forbidden because Costanza’s husband was a manual labourer (manovale) who ‘worked the earth’.⁵⁹

Similarly, the laws banning imitation pearls and gems were also routinely disobeyed (for imitation pearls, see Experiment in focus VI). A complaint filed against the unnamed wife of a Florentine shoemaker who lived in Via de’ Pescioni reported that she was seen on the morning of 27 February 1639 passing the Church of San Michelino degli Antinori wearing ‘a necklace of black beads and Venetian false pearls’, along with other forbidden items.⁶⁰ Whether or not the shoemaker’s wife was within the first six years of her marriage, according to the most recent sumptuary laws it was forbidden to wear such pearls because they were false.⁶¹

Although the sumptuary laws of northern Italian cities in this period sought to control the wearing of pearls and often started with a blanket ban on their use, close examination shows that there were opportunities for women from the lower social orders to wear pearls legally. The relatively lenient laws regarding the consumption of pearls in Siena perhaps explain, at least in part, why there are substantially more instances of their ownership here than Florence or even Venice in the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ database. But the various types of pearls, and their range of prices, meant that they could be obtained by families that were not particularly wealthy. Pearls were closely associated with purity, chastity and marriage – as well as social and financial status – so it is unsurprising that the wives and daughters of labourers, craftspeople, shopkeepers and other artisans wanted to – and did – wear them.

Conclusion

Owning and wearing pearls was a sign of economic, social and marital status in early modern Italy. Unsurprisingly, the largest, plumpest and roundest pearls were the preserve of the elite; they were rare, costly and often forbidden to most. But there were also other, less coveted types of pearls that were available at lower prices for buyers without substantial resources. And these could be purchased from jewellers, goldsmiths, pawnshops and auctions, making pearls more widely accessible than scholars have previously acknowledged.

As this chapter has shown, when we take the time and care to examine the jewellery boxes, cupboards and shelves inside the homes and shops of non-elite people, it quickly becomes apparent that they did not lead the dirty, drab and depressing lives often attributed to them by scholars. The wives of gardeners flaunted their pearls in the city streets, kitchen workers traded pearls for small loans and farriers had pearls auctioned to pay off debts. Indeed, as the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ project shows, non-elite people were keen to participate in both fashion trends and longer-held customs to construct and demonstrate their social, financial and marital identities. They at once sought to belong to and stand out in the groups of which they were a part, and pearl jewellery was just one way of achieving this.