Giovanni di Castiglione The Arrivabene Family The Gregori Brothers

The contemporary commentator who wrote that, by the early sixteenth century, Venice was a city “so full of books that it was hardly possible to walk down a street without armfuls thrust upon you, like cats in a bag, for two or three coppers each” unwittingly provided an evocative opening to any description of the culture of Venetian print.ⁱ As well as concern for the increasing vulgarization of intellectual life, his words underline the sheer quantity of printed material available for purchase in one of the most important centers for the production and sale of books in the Renaissance. As the city made the transfer from a manuscript culture enjoyed by the very few, to a culture of printing accessible to many, the voices of outspoken critics like Filippo de Strata gradually quieted.ⁱⁱ

There certainly were plenty of books in Venice in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: by 1500, at least twenty for each member of the city’s population.ⁱⁱⁱ This number would continue to rise, as in that year approximately 150 Venetian presses had produced more than 4,000 distinct editions—more than twice the known output of the city’s nearest rival, Paris. This rapid rate of production would continue to rise at an extraordinary rate, reaching a peak between 1540 and 1575, when a disastrous outbreak of plague struck down many of the most established printers in the city.^iv The Edit16 online database of surviving titles produced in Italy between 1501 and 1600 furnishes a list of some 27,148 Venetian editions, and the current consensus among print historians suggests that this figure might easily be doubled to take into account both lost editions and the more ephemeral fogli volanti—literally “flying sheets”—which formed a considerable segment of the daily output of a Venetian press.^v Though we may be unable to surmise an exact figure for the number of editions published in Venice during this period, we can be certain that the city led the way in the production of printed material, as well as in its export and consumption.

High demand for Venetian editions across Italy, throughout Northern Europe, and even further afield—especially those produced by some of the most renowned printers of the Renaissance, who had established their presses in the lagoon—certainly goes a long way towards explaining the vast quantity of printed material flowing from presses in the early part of the sixteenth century. Leading figures in the historiography of Renaissance print may not have been Venetian, but they certainly chose to establish and maintain their presses in the lagoon. Aldus Manutius founded the famed Aldine Press, which published its first edition in 1495, by following in the footsteps of Nicolas Jenson, whose prodigious technical skills and clear Roman typeface had already established Venice as the publishing capital of Italy.^vi

The success of Jenson and Manutius, who were both migrants, encouraged a second generation of Italian-born printers to refine their printing techniques and exploit the city’s favorable trading conditions. Demand for printed material, coupled with the lure of the imagined wealth the printing industry was thought to bring, made print a “boom industry” in Venice by the early decades of the sixteenth century.^vii These second-generation printers continued to attract international renown to the Venetian printing industry by producing wares of high quality in large quantity; establishing the city’s position at the forefront of developing letters and types like Greek and Hebrew; and perfecting the printing of complex musical annotation. Even books produced in more conventional types—whether in Latin or vernacular languages—embraced innovation, demanding clearer Roman typefaces, intricate woodcut illustrations, and the much smaller, more portable octavo format used by Manutius.

Specialization and innovation—whether in terms of format, typeface, or content—have thus defined the history and historiography of Venetian print. Venice's printing culture did not flourish until several years after its start elsewhere. After the emergence of the first press in Mainz, the earliest printers traveled to the nearby cities of Strasbourg (1460), Cologne (1465), Basel (1468), and Nuremburg, before venturing across the Alps to the Italian peninsula. Venice was not, however, their first port of call. Printers from Mainz and Cologne initially established small printing houses in Rome and the mountains to the east of the city, focusing on the production of religious books, bible commentaries, and theological works (1465). From Rome, Swiss-German migrant printers ventured further down the Italian peninsula to Naples, where they were actively encouraged to produce beautiful books by the royal court and its circle of scholars. Similar patterns of patronage can also be found, albeit at later dates, at the court of the Medici in Florence and the Sforza in Milan.

In a commercial hub like Venice, however, the growth of printing did not require the patronage of church or court. In 1469, Johannes de Spira (or Speyer) travelled across the Alps from the Rhineland, and was granted a monopoly by the Venetian Signoria to publish books in the lagoon. His untimely death in that year may have led to the lapsing of the monopoly, but it opened the floodgates to other migrant printers who, like Nicolas Jenson, perfected and honed their skills and began to produce beautifully printed, high quality volumes, frequently illustrated. The market for their printed works stretched far beyond the limits of the lagoon, as the growing renown of the city’s print industry ensured that markets for Venetian volumes were established across Northern Europe and beyond. In turn, demand for Venetian print in the sixteenth century led an ever-increasing number of artisans into the industry, whether as printers, typecutters, typesetters, woodcutters, mapmakers, designers, stationers, papermakers, binders, or booksellers. Some of these artisans had been born in Venice and apprenticed to such trades from adolescence, but others were drawn to the lagoon by the promise of steady work and handsome profits.

Practically speaking, the equipment required for the manufacture of printed material in Venice in the sixteenth century was neither particularly complex nor prohibitively expensive. At the very least, a print shop would be in possession of a wooden press—of the relatively basic kind that had been adapted and elevated from its initial role in the production of olive oil and wine—and a font or two of cast metal moveable type. From records as early as 1474, we learn that presses “for printing letters, wooden, fully equipped” (i.e. including type) were selling among other items for as a little as 100 lire, or 16 ducats—a capital investment hardly larger than the cost of paper required for a single volume.^viii New types, including those required for the printing of Greek, Hebrew, and musical annotation, were continually produced and perfected by Venetian metalworkers and were sold to printers as the need arose. Presses also changed hands frequently, with larger print shops investing in additional or replacement presses as smaller, more transient operations folded and sold off their equipment.

Beyond the basic press or presses necessary for printing text, workshops that specialized in producing illustrated books or single-leaf prints would also contain large wooden blocks in various states of preparation. Planks of medium-grained woods like beech, sycamore, apple, pear, and cherry were carefully carved with relief designs, before being coated with special gums and resins, inked, and pressed in a standard printing press.^ix Smaller illustrations could be set directly into wooden frames alongside blocks of text; while larger blocks (like those used for the Fasciculus medicinae) might have small pieces of metal type set into the block to create annotations and inscription. In relative terms, these large blocks would have represented a significant financial investment for a print shop. However, they could also be used, reused, and repaired over time; and demand for more expensive illustrated books—whether complex scientific textbooks, illustrated Bibles, or chivalric romances—would have offset the higher costs. It is certainly worth noting that, whilst the day-to-day expenses of paper, ink, and labor were substantial, the “start-up” costs for an artisan seeking to establish his own printing press in Venice were much lower than those who were engaged in trades of a comparable social or professional level, such as furnaces for the production of glass and mirrors, or looms for silk weaving.

Each printing press—whether a shop possessed just one, or several—required its own workforce of four or five artisans. Many print shops were owned and operated by members of the same family, but the team generally consisted of men who were at different stages of their professional training, or who possessed different skills. At the bottom were the apprentices (garzoni), who came from a wide variety of backgrounds. The sons of ordinary citizens, apothecaries, wine merchants, carpenters, weavers, and (of course) printers, apprentices had to be literate in both the Italian vernacular and in Latin.^x The age of the apprentice averaged between 15 and 20 years, with their period of service fluctuating between 2 and 5 years. In addition to teaching the apprentice his craft, the master was required to provide him with room and board, clothes, and pocket money; and in return the apprentice swore to obey his master, serve him faithfully, and not to leave his house. Apprentices were, therefore, a crucial and omnipresent part of life in a Renaissance print shop, and carried out a variety of basic tasks from inking and cleaning metal type to dampening and drying paper, and stacking printed sheets.

Newly qualified apprentices then became journeymen (lavoranti) who travelled from town to town for another five years, working under many masters to refine their skills and specializations.^xi Venetian printers also began to sell their wares at book fairs, sending their journeymen away at strategic points in the calendar to represent them at these popular and lucrative events. In so doing, they were able to make handsome profits and continue to attract admiration for Venetian editions in the cities of Northern Europe.

Alongside journeymen and apprentices were compositors and pressmen, skilled workmen who were responsible for carrying out the fundamental processes of printing. While compositors prepared and set metal type into wooden frames for printing, pressmen pulled sheets of paper and manually operated the press to create impressions. The latter was a less skilled and more physically demanding job, but one that was facilitated by the role of one or more apprentices. Finally, jobs like proof correction, design, and the cutting of blocks for illustrations depended entirely on the size of the print shop. Larger publishing houses might have a head compositor to check the first proofs and an in-house woodcarver to produce and finish their blocks, but in the great majority of cases, small printing businesses relied on the services of freelance artisans who worked across several shops.

This sense of fluidity between print shops—manifested in the form of a compositor, designer, or cutter who worked for many shops; in projects which necessitated collaboration between producers of word or image; or even the sharing of basic resources—was facilitated by the geography of print in sixteenth century Venice. Print shops focused around the city’s two main shopping thoroughfares: the Merceria and the Frezzaria.^xii In these bustling streets businesses of many kinds flourished, from apothecaries to weavers, wine shops, and window makers. Though booksellers might bind and sell finished volumes, it was a more common practice for print shops to sell their wares—often in the form of unbound, untrimmed sheets—to customers directly. Artisans might buy books with their own wine, oil, flour, or fabrics, whilst itinerant print sellers commissioned specific print runs and left objects such as bedsheets or tablecloths as security until they had sold their wares.^xiii This complex system of exchange can make it extremely difficult to calculate the prices of books, prints, and maps in Venice and elsewhere in the early modern period. However, research into print shops and their markets across Europe during the Renaissance has shown that the majority of vernacular books, and even some classical, medical, or philosophical texts in Latin, were within the reach of working artisans.^xiv

Print shops in Venice were not, of course, confined to the Merceria and Frezzaria. Along with the popular streets around the market at Rialto, the area immediately to the west of the Piazza San Marco—encompassing the parishes of San Moisè, San Vidal, Santo Stefano, San Luca, and San Fantin—was one of the most densely populated areas in sixteenth-century Venice. The names of printers, booksellers, and stationers appear frequently on archive lists of births, marriages, and deaths in these parishes, living and working in premises that were larger and more affordable than those on the main thoroughfares, but still strategically located. They offered all the key components necessary for success in the printing industry: an established community of printers and booksellers to offer advice and support; a meeting place for customers and itinerant sellers; and, in some cases, ready access to the canals. From waterside entrances, shops were supplied with equipment and materials; while boats could be loaded up with thousands of printed sheets, rolled and stacked into barrels and crates, destined for export markets.

Print shops in sixteenth-century Venice were, therefore, a hive of activity. Open late into the evening, shops provided informal meeting places where people could gather together after work to read and talk about the latest news. They were noisy spaces, where loud, jovial exchanges and bartered transactions took place over the noise of the manual wooden press, the tinkling of metal type, the shuffling of dry pages, and the day-to-day conversations of workers who went about the business of print. Finally, they were dirty spaces, full of the smells and stains of thick, black inks, damp papers, and sweat. Though surviving volumes may not provide us with much insight into the day-to-day experience of life inside the Venetian print shop, they do demonstrate the quantity, quality, and variety of the materials that issued from the city’s presses. What is more, whether they were produced in large workshops or small, by renowned printers or relatively unknown ones, the Venetian editions so prized in collections today started life in much the same way: as stacks of clean paper on dirty workshop floors, waiting to be transformed under the ink-stained hands of artisans and their presses.

Written by Dr. Natalie Lussey Seale

Notes:
[i] M. Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice (Ithaca, 1979) 26.

[ii] F. de Strata, Polemic Against Printing translated by S. Grier and edited by M. Lowry (Birmingham, 1986) unpaginated.

[iii] Lowry 1979, 8.

[iv] See I. Fenlon & J. Haar, The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century: Sources and Interpretation (Cambridge, 1988) 54; A. Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden, 2013); and Ibid. 7–8.

[v] U. Rozzo, Linee per una storia dell’editoria religiosa in Italia (1465–1600) (Udine, 1993) 21–22; J. Bernstein, Music Printing in Renaissance Venice: The Scotto Press (1539–1572) (Oxford, 1998) 13–14.

[vi] M. Lowry, Venetian Printing: Nicolas Jenson and the Rise of the Roman Letterform (Herning, 1989) and J. A. Dane, Out of Sorts: On Typography and Print Culture (Pennsylvania, 2011) 57–71.

[vii] On print as a “boom industry” see V. Scholderer, “Printing at Venice to the End of 1481” in D. E. Rhodes (ed.), Fifty Essays in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Bibliography (Amsterdam, 1966) 75.

[viii] In 1474, Peter the baker of the nearby university town of Padua was selling a fully equipped printing press among a lot of bric-a-brac for just 100 lire (just over 16 ducats). This account is recorded in Lowry 1979, 10. See also F. C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973) 316.

[ix] On the preparation of blocks, see D. Woodward, “Woodcut Technique” in idem. Five Centuries of Map Printing (Chicago, 1975) 42–43; and A. M. Hind, Introduction to the History of Woodcut (1935) 1–28.

[x] L. Febrve, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450–1800 (New York, 1997) 129; and J. Shaw, The Justice of Venice: Authorities and Liberties in the Urban Economy, 1550–1750 (Oxford, 2006) 169–70.

[xi] The training of both garzone and lavorante tightened up considerably in 1572 when the Guild of Printers’ and Booksellers began to restrict and examine new entrants to the trade more carefully. The founding documents for this Guild are found in the Biblioteca Museo Correr in Venice: Marticola dell’Arte dei stampatori e librari di Venezia f.18v–19r (27 April 1572).

[xii] See E. Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400–1600 (New Haven, 2005).

[xiii] The printer Francesco de Madiis frequently received payment in barter, be it with wine, oil, or flour: see B. Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 1999) 38. For more on this system of exchange, common across the Italian peninsula and beyond, see: P. F. Gehl, “Day-by-Day on Credit: Binders and Booksellers in Cinquecento Florence,” La Bibliofilia 100 (1998) 391–409 and idem , “Credit-Sales Strategies in the Late Cinquecento Book Trade,” in A. Ganda & E. Grignani (eds.), Libri tipografi biblioteche. Richerche storiche dedicate a Luigi Balsamo (Florence, 1997) 193–206.

[xiv] D. Landau & P. Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470–1550 (New Haven, 1994) 349–53. On the price of books and relative incomes, see P. F. Grendler, “Printing and Censorship” in C. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, & E. Kessler (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy . (Cambridge, 1988) 30–33.