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Italian Cloth in the Middle-Ages
After being part of the Holy Roman Empire , there was the independence
of the northern and central Italian communes or towns. The most
famous of these towns were:
Venise, Florence and Genoa.
They were famous for their products. They specialized in the
working of wool, which was imported from England, and the dyeing of textiles,
which could be in flax, in hemp or in wool.
They had an advantage over the other towns, for example, of being
beside the sea or a river, so they could receive merchandise by boat.
During the Middle-Ages, lots of fairs were organized by lords and lots
of merchants came to sell their products.
The first days of the fair were reserved for the cloth merchants.
The cloth which was imported from Italy, was famous because the textiles
were warm and robust and even merchants from the Far East would come
to buy them.
Woven cloth was expensive. To have one piece of cloth of fifty
square cm it would cost ten pennies.
Marble
The Romans, while in Tarrana, found the material that would help them
to make themselves known in the world. It is in 1300 after a period of inactivity
during the Middle-Ages that the Florentine artists gave a substantial boost
(a new beginning) to the extraction and transformation of the marble in
Versilia where the superb artist Michelangelo, famous for his statue called
David, lived for 3 years.
But it was during the Renaissance that the maximum glory of sculptures
was reached. Even Leopoldo II had opened a School of Fine Arts that still
exists today. It is in the Apuane Alps that for along time the artist
found the perfect place to work : raw materials, laboratories, experienced
artisans etc. And artists like Michelangelo followed.
Sources of information :
Books:Image Doc
http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/Places/Italy www.mi.cnr.it/WOI/deagosti/history/renaissn
www.mi.cnr.it/WOI/deagosti/history/renaissn
www.webspace.it/duck/marmo/vie
www.webspace.it/duck/marmo/introd
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