family and society 345
succeed her in the shop, while another was to be sent to Germany to learn
the trade with “our esteemed merchants.” Zuanne Raimondi also recom-
mended that their daughters be given in marriage to Venetian patricians,
a significant example of the conceivable possibilities for social advance-
ment in the age.55
Guild regulations from the 15th century onward allowed silk-weavers to
employ their wives and daughters, but progressively, especially in the silk
sector, the Venetian government chose to facilitate autonomous female
work in order to stimulate production, thanks to the cheaper labor offered
by female workers. From 1754 onward, women could become master
silk-weavers, but they could only produce on commission by merchants.
moreover, if they did not wish to give up their trade and shop, they could
only marry a master weaver. little girls were in shops beginning at seven
years of age, and by ten to 12 years of age, they often knew how to oper-
ate a loom; at 17, they were expert weavers; but those who reached this
result were, for the most part, daughters of master weavers or widows.
Women were present especially in less skilled and less remunerated posi-
tions within the silk industry, however, jobs often carried out in houses
inhabited by several families or by several widows who shared the cost
of rent, sometimes sub-letting rooms to other people. these small female
domestic enterprises constituted specific forms of cohabitation by women
who belonged to different family groups and different generations.56
artisan fathers were in the habit of committing their daughters to mar-
riage, hardly ever to monachization, and left mothers free to decide the
value of daughters’ dowries. However, because daughters, like wives, col-
laborated in the activity of the artisan’s shop, the father’s obligation to
provide his daughter with a dowry took on a completely different mean-
ing. artisans’ wills, when there were no sons, served to protect widows
in their old age and also to encourage widows to remarry. many wives
55 dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani. The Social Foundations of the Venetian
Renaissance State (Baltimore, 1987); crouzet-Pavan, Sopra le acque; Bellavitis, Famille,
pp. 159–160.
56 luca molà, La comunità dei Lucchesi a Venezia. Immigrazione e industria della seta
nel tardo Medioevo (Venice, 1994); luca molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Bal-
timore/london, 2000); luca molà, “le donne nell’industria serica veneziana del Rinasci-
mento,” in luca molà, Reinhold c. mueller, and claudio Zannier, eds., La seta in Italia
dal Medioevo al Seicento (Venice, 2000), pp. 423–59; Panciera, “emarginazione”; marcello
della Valentina, “the Silk industry in Venice: Guilds and labour Relations in the Seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries,” in Paola lanaro, ed., At the Center of the Old World.
Trade and Manufacturing in Venice and the Venetian Mainland, 1400–1800 (toronto, 2006),
pp. 109–42.