Venice: Trade, Production, Consumption of Textiles and Dress in the Early Modern.

Venice in the early modern period flourished as a centre of textile production and trade,
shaping and fostering global networks of connections that directly impacted dress in
Europe and elsewhere. Due to Venice’s impenetrable location, its proximity to the centre
of Europe and a long-standing tradition of merchants and seafarers, Venice had
positioned itself as a principal gateway between Europe and the East. Whether it was
through the importation of luxury goods such as textiles and carpets, exports of beauty
products and perfumes or exchanges of ambassadorial gifts, Venice aided in the
dissemination and infiltration of ideas, styles and designs between Europe and the East.
Furthermore, due to the flourishing art production and the thriving printing press in
sixteenth-century Venice, textile patterns and dress styles were able to spread
throughout Europe and the rest of Venice’s trading posts around the world influencing
fashions, designs, methods of production and patterns of consumption. Apart from the
unaffected patrician government attire, infiltrations of new styles were particularly
noticeable in Venice itself, throughout Carnival festivities, dogal and ambassadorial
processions, operas and theatres, gambling dens and in everyday life where both spaces
and bodies were adorned.
This conference aims to generate a discussion about the role of Venice as a centre of a
global network of connections as seen through its trade, production, and consumption of
textiles and dress as well as carpets, haberdashery, beauty products, perfumes, dyes,
feathers, jewellery and design.

Registration
Ticket price €15,00 + €1,92 administrative costs
Register before 25 May through https://dressingearlymodernvenice.eventbrite.nl

Organised by Jola Pellumbi and Sara van Dijk (Dressing the Early Modern Network) and
Torsten Korte (University of Bern), in collaboration with the Centro Tedesco di Studi
Veneziani and the University of Bern, and generously supported by the Fritz Thyssen
Foundation.

DAY 1 - WEDNESDAY 28 MAY

18:00-19:00 Special Guest lecture
The Mysterious Blue in Dürer’s “Feast of the Rosary” (1506): On the Problem of
Interpreting the Textile Colours in the Painting
Professor Philipp Zitzlsperger (University of Innsbruck)

19:00 Ricevimento at the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani

DAY 2 - THURSDAY 29 MAY

09:30-10:00 Registration and coffee

10:00-10:10 Welcome by organizers

10:10-12:00 Session 1: Luxury and trade
Chair: Professor Luca Molà

10:10-10:30 From Venice to Lyon and Vice Versa: The Road to a New Trade in Fashionable Silk Fabrics, 17th to 18th Century, Moïra Dato (University of Bern)

10:30-10:50 Francesco Zen: Luxury Trade and Technological Innovation Between Venice and Constantinople in the Early 16th Century, Elisa Puppi (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia)

10:50-11:10 Venetian Trade of Italian textiles in Hungary until the End of the 16th Century, Maxim Mordovin (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)

11:10-11:30 Beyond Luxury: The Circulation of Silk Waste in Early Modern Venice (1500-1650), Sofia Gullino (Università degli Studi di Padova)

11:30-12:00 Discussion

12:00-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 Session 2: Global connections
Chair: Professor Catherine Kovesi

14:00-14:20 Circulating Civilisation - Venetian Glass Beads as Agents of Global (Ex)Change, Sandrine Welte (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia)

14:20-14:40 “Sempre Magnifico”: Catherine de’ Medici through the Eyes of Venetian Ambassadors, Emily Averiss (Warburg Institute, University of London)

14:40-15:00 Under the radar or over the top? Clothing of Jerusalem Pilgrims in the Late 15th Century, Alicia Wolff (University of Heidelberg)

15:00-15:30 Discussion

15:30-16.00 Coffee and tea break

16:00-17:00 Session 3: The politics of dress
Chair: Jola Pellumbi

16:00-16:20 Sartorial Rhetoric: Dress and Anglo-Venetian Relations in the Early Sixteenth Century, Grace Waye-Harris (University of Adelaide)

16:20-16:40 The Collective Wig: Political Power and Periwigs in Eighteenth-Century Venice, Professor Liz Horodowich (New Mexico State University)

16:40-17:00 Discussion
17:00-17:15 Closing remarks
17:15 Farewell and aperitivo