industry and production in the venetian terraferma 309
of this, it is clear that almost the entire production of raw silk and items
of spun silk in the Venetian republic in this period was exported, and
almost exclusively beyond state borders. producers in Vicenza and Verona
distinguished themselves particularly in this line of work, operating along
commercial trajectories that were largely independent and extraneous to
Venetian intermediation; in the course of the 16th and in the 17th and 18th
centuries, these trajectories would undergo profound modifications which
led the Venetian terraferma silk industry to change numerous times both
its specialized production and its market outlets, and thus propose new
products for new markets.
While in the late 15th century and the first decades of the 16th, for
example, raw silk, semifinished goods, and other manufactured products
were destined mainly for Italian markets (above all Genoa, Milan, Bolo-
gna, and Mantua, but also Florence, Lucca, Ferrara, Modena, and reggio
emilia), the importance of direct exports to the silk-weaving centers of
the peninsula tended to diminish (without disappearing completely) in
tandem with the spread of mulberry cultivation in many parts of northern
Italy. From that point on, terraferma silk producers worked largely to sat-
isfy demand coming from northern european countries, and the relation-
ships among Vicenza, Verona, and other cities of the republic involved in
silk manufacturing increasingly intensified with the manufacturing cities
of central and northern europe. France, Flanders, and then england, Ger-
many, holland, and even poland increasingly saw the presence and opera-
tion of enterprising merchants from the Veneto region, able to manage
a multiplicity of exchange routes thanks to the creation of sophisticated
mercantile networks.39
that the examples of such men are truly innumerable demonstrates
the international importance achieved by silk production in the Veneto.
We might recall the Murari from Verona, who in 1571 could boast credits
for over 100,000 ducats of sold silk in Bolzano, rome, antwerp, Lyons,
London, and nuremberg; or that of the cogollo brothers of Vicenza, who
between the 1550s and 1590s formed various companies with an initial
capital of several thousand ducats (up to 30,000 ducats in some cases)
and operated with their own agents and correspondents in the buying and
39 Molà, the Silk Industry of renaissance Venice, pp. 241–46; edoardo demo, “sete e
mercanti vicentini alle fiere di Lione nel XVI secolo,” in paola Lanaro, ed., La pratica dello
scambio: sistemi di fiere, mercanti e città in europa (1400–1700) (Venice, 2003), pp. 177–99;
Vianello, “Mercanti, imprese e commerci nel cinque e seicento,” pp. 187–229; demo, “Wool
and silk,” pp. 235–37.