An Area with a Great Manufacturing Vocation. The Economy of Vicenza and the Veneto Foothills in the Renaissance

Numerous contributions over the last thirty years have greatly expanded our knowledge of mercantile practice in the late medieval and Renaissance Venetian mainland as never before. A particularly convincing picture of this has emerged, thanks to which it has been possible to define the peculiarities of a long unimagined situation marked by a very high concentration of manufacturing and commercial activities, with some sectors, above all those of wool and silk manufacture, of an absolute international level and for this very reason considered at the forefront in terms of technology and organization. It is now known with certainty that the wool and silk products made in Renais- sance Veneto circulated almost everywhere in Europe and beyond, achieving considerable market success. And while the woollen mill and the silk mill may rightly be seen as the cornerstones of the pre-industrial Veneto economy, such as to constitute a reserve of fundamental technical and entrepreneurial expertise useful for explaining the subsequent stages of the region’s industrial growth, the developments seen in other key sectors were of no minor importance: from mining to the processing of wood and paper; from the production of saltpetre and war materials to the tanning of hides; from metallurgy to printing. Furthermore, the same research has not only shown that Venice and the mainland were undoubtedly permeated by a great and precocious manufacturing vocation, but also that this phenomenon was not confined to the main urban centres, but involved much of the foothill or lower mountain band between the Bergamo and Feltre-Belluno regions. A vast area geographically, densely populated and generally marked by land that is poorly suited to agriculture, but rich in wood and water.