Dante and Boccaccio: A Poetics of Textiles

Julianna Van Visco

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2020

© 2020

Julianna Visco

All Rights Reserved

Abstract

Dante and Boccaccio: A Poetics of Textiles

Julianna Visco

This dissertation examines the literary depiction of textiles and textile-adjacent objects in

Dante’s Commedia and Boccaccio’s Decameron using a two-pronged approach: answering

Barolini’s call to historicize and incorporating Smith’s approach to investigating materials and workshop practices. While being physically engaged with textiles is a universal experience, the

Trecento Florentine was immersed in a textile-driven culture. Dante and Boccaccio’s deployment of textiles reflect and engage with this specific historical moment and geographic location. This project uses an exploration of the production practices, in other words a focus on the processes of making, as a lens for the text. Techniques, such as the hem, are a site of skilled practice; linking the physicality of craft production with the tacit knowledge of craftspersons. The dual-sidedness of textiles provides a material example of the recto/verso relationship inherent in cultural production. Dante, often using simile or metaphor, represents textiles in the Commedia to make spiritual and cosmic concepts more clear and comprehensible to his readership. Weaving, for

Dante, is intricately connected to writing and provides a model for meditating on the process of making. Boccaccio locates, in the specific material conditions of the textile industry, categories—such as gender, occupation, and social status—with which he makes radical narrative choices in order to disrupt the essentializing nature of categories themselves. Finally, an exploration of wrapping and disintegration reveals the inexorable fate of textiles.

Table of Contents

List of Tables, Illustrations, Charts iii

Acknowledgments iv

Dedication v

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Matter of Materials 20

1.1 Textile Industry 22

1.2 Materials 27

1.2.1 Linen 32

1.2.2. Wool 35

1.2.3 Silk 57

Chapter 2: Craftsmanship 72

2.1 The Generic Artisan 76

2.2 Skilled Practice 83

2.3 Tools, Techniques, and Work Roles 86

2.3.1 The Spindle and Spinning 88

2.3.2 The Needle and its Practitioners 105

2.3.2.1 Tailors 110

2.3.2.2 Sewing 118

i

2.3.3 The Hem 121

2.3.3.1 Lembo 123

2.3.3.2 Margini 128

2.3.3.3 Orlo 130

2.3.3.2 Vivagno 133

Chapter 3: (Un)Making Cloth: Becoming and Unbecoming 140

3.1 Dante and Tartar Cloths 145

3.2 Boccaccio and Tartar Cloths 168

3.2.1 Wrapping 173

3.3 Disintegration 178

Conclusion 184

References 188

ii List of Tables, Illustrations, Charts

Table 1 Snapshot of Database 8

Table 2 Sample Chart 9

Figure 1 Raw Wool 28

Figure 2 Spindles 88

Chart 1 Hem Lexicon 122

Chart 2 Hem Meaning 123

Table 3 Language performing a seam 129

Chart 3 Hem Frequency 138

Figure 3 Lampas with phoenixes 156

iii

Acknowledgments

I would like to express gratitude to my advisor, Teodolinda Barolini, for her intellectual guidance, support, and encouragement. To be able to work with someone whose renowned scholarship is matched only by her grace and compassion is truly a gift. I would additionally like to thank my committee for their advice, critical feedback, and support over the course of this large project. It has been a pleasure to work with such a dream team of scholars and human beings.

iv

Dedication

To my husband, Christopher, and amazing children, Serafina and Leonora, for reminding me what is truly important and for all of their love and support throughout this process.

To my father, James Van Gelder, for insisting that there is a solution to every problem.

v

Introduction

Weaving is a primordial practice and a universal language. Despite regional and temporal variations in raw materials, tools, and technology, the binary system undergirds all methods of weaving; a series of zeroes and ones, heddles up and heddles down. This system became the inspiration for modern day computing via Charles Babbage and Ava

Lovelace. But punch cards did not institute something new. Rather, the application of punch cards only mechanized a previously established practice with the Jacquard loom, itself an innovation on previous practices.

Moreover, we can go back millennia. Loom weights are commonly found in archaeological excavations in Europe and the Near East. There is evidence of warp- weighed looms from the Neolithic period, 6,500-12,000 years ago.1 In this sense, weaving is both a primitive and advanced technology. And the mathematical foundation upon which weaving is built obliterates many of the differences found in weaving practices across geography and time. The nomenclature around modern day computing finds its source in many Latin words associated with weaving.2 Even in our day-to-day speech the metaphors connecting weaving to narrative are inescapable: we talk about weaving a story, spinning a tale, or following a narrative thread. Text is connected to textile. The mathematical foundation of weaving underpins the common cognitive and embodied experiences of weavers and weaving pattern designers.

1 Barber reports weaving: “is older than pottery or metallurgy and perhaps even than agriculture and stockbreeding.” See Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with special reference to the Aegean. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, 2.

2 Network and net are frequent examples. 1

This project will look at weaving language in the Commedia and the Decameron.

Both historical data and a cognitive and physiological understanding of the embodied practice of weaving allow us to better decode weaving language in the Commedia and the

Decameron, but the scope of this project is not limited to the single modality of weaving.

Noting that the English derivation of the word “loom” from the Middle English lome originally referred to a tool or utensil, Tim Ingold provocatively asks: “Does this not suggest that to our predecessors, at least, the surface-building activity of weaving, rather than any of those activities involving the application of force to pre-existing surfaces, somehow epitomized technical processes in general?”3 Ingold describes three ways the skill of weaving can be broadened or likened to other craft skills. The practitioner operates within a field of forces set up through their engagement with material. The work consists not just of mechanical application of external force but rather of care, judgment and dexterity, and the action has a narrative quality: in other words every movement grows rhythmically out of the one before and lays the groundwork for the next.4 With its narrative component, it is the third skill that most captures the intrinsic relationship between text and textile. By accepting Ingold’s premise, we can cast a wider net in our object of study beyond the specific practice of weaving to include the practices of spinning, sewing, tailoring, and other elements of textile production because in this view weaving is the process, not only the end product. Ingold concludes that the weaving is the making. For literary scholars the text mediates the object. Because this project examines

3 Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000, 346.

4 Ibid., 347.

2

the textual evidence of gestures and signs pointing to material objects and practices, I would loosely define the titular poetics of textiles in this way: the weaving is the writing.

Terza rima, the metrical form in which Dante wrote the Commedia, is described as an interlocking or weaving of words. Alan Wong writes: “Assigned prosodic as well as symbolic functions, terza rima in the Commedia is no mere embellishment. Prosodically, it gives the poem an interlocking unity in which lines, while resonating across the page, echo each other within each tercet.”5 One could make the textile comparison to embroidery, as an embellishment that exists on the surface, versus weaving or tapestry, where the design lives in and is constituted by the structure of the fabric. The rhyme word, like a weft, emerges in a tercet again only after it has been submerged in a rhythmic pattern by the warp of the preceding tercet. In contrast to Dante’s terza rima,

Boccaccio wrote the Decameron in prose narrative. The structure of the Decameron, one of its primary features, has been the subject of much critical exegesis for almost seven hundred years. The framing techniques and motifs reveal another version of a woven structure.

While not initially obvious, Dante’s Commedia is rich in textile content. There are silk worms, thread, needles and scissors, wool and silk, spinners, a tailor and cobbler, belts, gowns, and cloaks, all items loaded with semiotic content.6 Boccaccio fills his novelle with depictions of cloaks, gowns, purses, and veils but also lanaioli, merchants, spinners, and carders. Upon closer examination of these representations, I became increasingly curious about how the objects were made, by whom, and what the processes

5 Wong, Alan. When Theory and Practice Meet: Understanding Translation through Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016, 263.

6 I am using Ingold’s terminology with “objects loaded with semiotic content.” See Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000, 347. 3

of making could reveal about the text. This dissertation thus functions as part of a larger project of bringing the material turn to medieval Italian literature. Just as an examination of materials has shifted and enriched the conversation in historical and art historical discourses, literary analysis can benefit from the application of the material turn to texts.

Textiles inherently play a physical and emotional role for the consumer and producer and in this historical period of cultural transition textiles play a symbolic and economic role in the construction of Florentine identity. While much of the textile content of both

Commedia and Decameron has been overlooked by scholars or treated in a perfunctory manner, the insightful and discerning work that has been done tends to focus on consumption, rather than production, with particular attention to fashion, sumptuary, and legislative issues. This work has produced valuable perspectives and also revealed a lacuna in the scholarship.

Virginia Postrel has worked diligently to wrest textiles from the modern day notion that fabric relates only to fashion in service of a goal; to restore fabric’s intrinsic role as a “technical achievement.”7 Furthermore, Postrel insists that forgetting or not understanding the role of textiles in our cultural heritage erases important aspects of women’s lives and work.8 As part of a larger aim to historicize our readings of the

Commedia and Decameron, this project uses an exploration of the production practices, a focus on the processes of making, as a lens for the text.9 Rejecting the dominant model of the human mind, one that inscribes designs on a surface through mechanical application

7 Postrel,Virginia. “How Textiles Repeatedly Revolutionised Human Technology.” Aeon Essays, 5 June 2015, aeon.co/essays/how-textiles-repeatedly-revolutionised-human-technology. Accessed 19 July 2019.

8 Ibid.

9 Barolini, Teodolinda. “Only Historicize: History, Material Culture, and the Future of Dante Studies.” Dante Studies, no. 127, 2009, 37-54. 4

of bodily force, Ingold argues that forms grow out of an interaction between people and materials in an environment and insists that the craftsperson “works from within the world, not upon it.”10

The craftspersons of Trecento Italy, along with their consumers including Dante and Boccaccio, were swimming in the same sea of materials.11 As Pamela Smith cogently notes, “Materials are always understood in the conditions and events of their time; they are imbued with political meaning and shaped by the beliefs of their creators and audiences.”12 This dissertation examines both authors’ literary representations of textile materials, practices, and objects paired with their social context in this specific historical moment. In doing so, I wrestle with questions of narrative agency, epistemology, and embodied identity.

My selection of Dante’s Commedia and Boccaccio’s Decameron is no accident.

Nor is it due solely to the primacy of their positions in the Italian literary canon. Both authors lived in a pivotal moment of a culture in transition. Italy, and Florence in particular, underwent political, economic, and material changes in a gradual transition from a medieval feudal structure to a merchant driven proto-city state organization over several centuries. The changes were particularly acute during the rough century encompassing the authors’ summative lifespans (1265-1375). One could argue Trecento

10 Ingold argues: “forms of objects are not imposed from above but grow from the mutual involvement of people and materials in an environment.” See Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000, 347.

11 Lehmann, Ann-Sophie. “The Matter of the Medium. Some Tools for an Art Theoretical Interpretation of Materials.” The Matter of Art: Materials, Technologies, Meanings 1200-1700, Ed. C. Anderson, A. Dunlop, P. H. Smith, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015, 21-36.

12 Smith, Pamela. The Matter of Art : Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250-1750. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 4.

5

Florence experienced a moment of economic and cultural transformation so radical it hurled Italy into an early Renaissance.

To put it plainly, both authors anchor their deployment of textiles in the specific material conditions of Trecento Florence. Both interrogate the agency of materials, different modes of knowing, and the relationships that textiles mediate, including meta- reflections on their own roles as makers of text. 13 These messages are communicated through a shared knowledge, with the reader, of the robust apparatus of the textile industry because physical engagement with textiles and total immersion in a textile- driven culture was a near universal experience for the Trecento Florentine. Cloth’s portability, value, utility as currency, and aesthetic attributes all contributed to a wide circulation and contact with diverse peoples and cultures.14 Further, clothing always carries a sociological and ethical component.

Dante, often using simile, metaphor or metonymy, represents textiles in the

Commedia to make spiritual and cosmic concepts more clear and comprehensible to his readership. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that metaphor, beyond its poetic and rhetorical functions, structures our conceptual system: metaphor is pervasive in how we think.15 Explaining that metaphor is a means of experiencing one thing in terms of another, Lakoff insists that the partially performed aspects of metaphor exist not just in

13 For more on the concept of ‘storied matter’ and the intersection of ecocriticism and narrative theory, see Iovino, Serenella, and Serpil Oppermann. Ed. Material Ecocriticism. Bloomington: Indiana Press, 2014.

14 Christoffersen notes: “Before gold and silver became common currencies, traders used cloth as coins.” See Christoffersen, Nynne Just. “Dye.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reinek. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 85.

15 Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, 5.

6

the words we use but presuppose the concept.16 Because one thing is understood partially based on the other, it is difficult to escape these turns of phrases. For instance, we often speak or write about weaving and writing as if they were the same thing. But if they were identical, there would be no need for metaphor. We conceive of narrative to be like weaving because that is how we experience it. Metaphors provide the experiential basis for intellectual and philosophical concepts.17

Dante skillfully deploys references to textiles often in metaphor to make complex concepts related to time, eternity, and the body, real and accessible.18 Writing in an adjacent moment, just thirty to forty years later, Boccaccio presents textiles prominently and overtly in the Decameron for a different purpose. Boccaccio often uses the culturally coded valences embedded in textile language first to reinforce stereotypes but then ultimately to challenge and subvert them. He strategically evokes the specific material conditions of the textile industry in order to make radical narrative choices and disrupt categories, nearly always in service of a poly-vocality.

Organizing Principles

To bring the historical practices and various theoretical perspectives on tacit knowledge and embodied skill to bear on the texts, I created a database with which to capture the appropriate textile content. I realized extant concordances were insufficient in capturing the content I needed primarily due to the pre-determined nature and directionality of an established data set. Using a previously constructed tool, you need to

16 Ibid., 5.

17 Ibid., 18.

18 Even those seeking refuge from the material world in a monastery or convent would, in addition to wearing textiles, have potentially been involved in the making of textiles or other textile-adjacent activities.

7

know what to search for and my initial searches had a marked consumer bias; locating finished textile objects such as gonna and manto. To liberate my research from the confines of the previously trodden path, I constructed an entirely new database informed by a careful, close reading of the texts guided by the research I was concurrently conducting on historical practices of production and material culture (see table 1.)

Cantica Canto Verse Italian English Category Terzina Tercet Notes Inf.464I66;4 Outside,4these4cloaks4were4 material4 gilded4and4they4dazzled;4/4 properties:4 4Di4fuor4dorate4son,4sì4ch’elli4 but4inside4they4were4all4of4 heavy;4inside4 abbaglia;4/44ma4dentro4tutte4 lead,4so4heavy4/4that4 outside4 piombo,4e4gravi4tanto,4/44che4 Frederick’s4capes4were4 recto/verso4 Inferno 23 65 piombo lead Material Federigo4le4mettea4di4paglia.4 straw4compared4to4them. relationship E4questo4ti4sia4sempre4 piombo4a’4piedi,4/4per4farti4 Par.4112I114;4 mover4lento4com’4uom4lasso4 And4let4this4weigh4as4lead4to4 material4 /e4al4sì4e4al4no4che4tu4non4 slow4your4steps,4/4to4make4 properties:4 vedi: you4move4as4would4a4weary4 heavy4see4 man4/4to4yes4or4no4when4 Cluny4cloaks4 Paradiso 13 112 piombo lead Material you4do4not4see4clearly: passage And4they4were4dressed4in4 Elli4avean4cappe4con4 cloaks4with4cowls4so4low4/4 cappucci4bassi4/44dinanzi4a4li4 they4fell4before4their4eyes,4 Inf.423.61I63;4 occhi,4fatte4de4la4taglia4/4 of4that4same4cut4/4that’s4 cut4as4style;4 4che4in4Clugnì4per4li4monaci4 used4to4make4the4clothes4 link4to4cut4as4 Inferno 23 62 taglia cut Technique fassi. for4Cluny’s4monks. cloth4allows But4because4the4time4is4 fleeting/44that4holds4you4 Ma4perchè4'l4tempo4fugge4 asleep,4here4we4will4make4 che4t'assonna4qui4farem4 an4end,4/44like4a4good4tailor4 Par.432.139I punto,4come4buon4sartore4 who4makes4the4garment4 1414link4to4 che4com'4elli4ha4del4panno4fa4 according4to4the4cloth4he4 tailor4in4 Paradiso 32 140 sartore tailor Work4Role la4gonna has Inferno Table 1 Snapshot of Database.

For instance, capturing the embodied movement of artisans only occurred to me after immersing myself in the work of Tim Ingold and Sophie Ann Lehman. Reading about the physicality of artisans’ work primed me to tag many of the embodied movements described in the text. I found these embodied movements frequently paired with other textile related content. As I captured content, I began an iterative process of

(re) defining fields with which to identify the content. I constructed each field to capture meaningful information around the terms. The initial structure began simply with the term itself (in Italian and English) and its textual location marked by

8

author/text/cantica/canto/verse for Dante and author/text/day/novella/text for Boccaccio.

As I collected data, the number of fields increased. I tracked themes, rhyme words, objects, and characterizations. With this approach, I could explore how the authors use textile-related language to describe landscapes and track techniques such as gilding, staining, and boiling that might be connected to textile production. Hammers may seem unrelated until examined in the context of battilori, who made gold leaf, gold wire, and gold and silver laminates for textile application under the jurisdiction of the Arte della seta.19 Some materials, such as feathers, have potential textile application but were not deployed as such in the text. Additional charts can be generated based on database findings (see table 2 for an exploration of hem terminology).

Table 2 Sample Chart.

I have chosen to organize the content contained herein not chronologically by author and text but rather by material.20 This approach comes at a cost of a non-linear approach to the narratives, but a gain with respect to materials and their production: it is necessary to perform a deep dive into each craft modality. As I scrutinized a particular

19 Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 228.

20 I use the term material to encapsulate a material approach. In other words, by raw material, work role, embodied movement, etc. 9

object or material I could search the database to find other instances of that category or related theme. The database began to reveal a web of interconnectivity of terminology across texts and between authors, connections that might have gone unnoticed if I were taking a more author-driven approach. Through the process of categorizing and re- categorizing terminology for the database, my chapter topics emerged. After materials

(chapter one), tools and techniques merged under the heading of craftsmanship (chapter two). A deep investigation into the term drappo led to a consideration of textiles as finished and unfinished and this dichotomy initiated the concept for chapter three. Any approach requires a protocol to deal with duplication or classification issues. The chapter divisions that I selected are built upon artificial boundaries, but must suffice. It was sometimes difficult to separate tool from material and material from object, within the narrative. On occasion a material was embedded in story in which a reference to tools also contributed to the meaning. I had to decide on where to locate this section. While imperfect, these decisions are guided by the principle of good narrative, in other words how best to tell the story that I want to tell about textiles in Dante and Boccaccio.

As a result of these organizing principles, contemporary materials or production practices not mentioned by Dante or Boccaccio remain outside of the scope of this project. Conversely, if both authors use the same term or refer to the same practice, it became a priority area to investigate. I emphasize moments in which both authors engage with similar content whether that be the mention of a raw material, for instance, silk, the inclusion of a particular type of textile worker, such as a spinner, or the depiction of a type of cloth, for example panni tartareschi. This method provides rich data from which I can extract similarities and differences in approach. Because we know that Boccaccio

10

was an avid Dante scholar, it affords me the ability to investigate how Boccaccio uses

Dantean material in a myriad of ways to structure his own text.

Chapter One: The Matter of Materials

Materials form the primary focus of chapter one; specifically the notion of a raw material and the social relational matrix in which it is embedded.21 On materials, Pamela

Smith notes: “There has been limited interest in materials or production as bearers of meaning–as social and historical agents-in their own right, let alone a willingness to take them as entries into the socially and historically contingent spaces of the imaginer, of

‘reverie’, that Bachelard so beautifully described.”22 Going in the direction suggested by

Smith’s observation, I investigate the economic, social, and sensory qualities, both functional and aesthetic of three of the four primary materials used in textile production in Trecento Italy–linen, wool, and silk–always mindful of their deployment in the texts.23

Christoffersen argues that textiles have always served a visual and communicative function besides their utilitarian purpose.24 On the essential difference between studies of materials and material culture, Smith considers “the ways in which materials themselves bring with them to the object their own histories of origins and association.”25

21 Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. 7.

22 Smith, Pamela. The Matter of Art : Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250-1750. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015, 5.

23 I exclude cotton because neither Dante nor Boccaccio make explicit reference to it in the texts under consideration.

24 Christoffersen notes: “Before gold and silver became common currencies, traders used cloth as coins.” See Christoffersen, Nynne Just. “Dye.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reinek. Emsdetten : Edition Imorde, 2017, 85.

25 Smith, Pamela. The Matter of Art : Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250-1750.(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015, 3. 11

In chapter one I show how the authors engage with the tactile and visual properties of the materials for their own particular aims. I show how Boccaccio uses the transparent properties of linen to communicate messages about purity and desire. Citing textual connections to the Commedia, I illustrate how Boccaccio’s overlay of Dante in

Decameron 10.6 contributes an additional erotic charge to that particular novella. Next, using the stories of lascivious priests, I show how Boccaccio deploys wool, because of its origins, associations, and processing apparatus, to communicate a spectrum of values frequently in opposition to silk and then how he complicates, challenges, and often subverts many of these entrenched associations with his nuanced deployment of wool as a material.

I further unravel how Boccaccio deploys knowledge about the range of wool in

Decameron 7.3, to reveal the boundaries of social categories, particularly lay vs. clerical, always pushing on but never completely dissolving them. At the same time, he complicates his on-going discourse on gender by inverting the gender identities in an equation between clothing and wit he constructed earlier in the text. Then, I argue

Boccaccio reinforces the relationship between text and textile by having his female protagonist use the performativity of wool clothing to bring about a salvific moment of narrative production. Boccaccio continues to put the theme of quality as expressed by grades of wool under the microscope. I show how specific cultural anxieties regarding authenticity and deception in the textile market are embedded in the wool discourse in

Decameron 8.2.

Using the physical transformation of the chrysalis to point to spiritual conversion,

Dante evokes a conceal/reveal dichotomy present in the literary application of textiles

12

and metaphor as a linguistic technique. I argue that Dante’s use of silk in the Commedia capitalizes on courtly love associations whereas Boccaccio deploys silk in a fundamentally different manner. Using four different novelle featuring donne mobili in the Mediterranean, I show how working with silk dramatically transforms each woman’s journey: in the case of Zinevra what appears to be cross-dressing is actually an act of cross-making, for Gostanza craft literacy is a path to cultural fluency, and in the case of

Iancafiore she exploits the economic complexities of the textile market to trick and deceive. Finally, I introduce two threads that I will follow throughout the dissertation: the circulation of tacit knowledge as disseminated by the movement of craftspersons and the construction of textile as concomitant with the construction of text.

Chapter Two: Craftsmanship

This chapter begins with an examination of the hand as a tool using Dante’s exploration of the haptic component of touch in Purgatorio. I explore the intersection of tools, techniques, and work roles as the site of craftsmanship. Next, I trace the hierarchy of textile arts as situated by Dante to explore the positive and negative aspects of art’s mimetic capabilities in light of Ingold’s classification of making under the rubric of copying. This framework provides an important model for the authenticity claims and anxieties about fraud that often accompany textile references in the Commedia. Then, I show how Dante situates God as the ultimate craftsperson while using the same lexicon to classify himself as a fabbro of language. Paradoxically, Dante repeatedly uses the figure of the artisan to privilege humility and anonymity. This tension reflects and at times interrogates the artisan’s precarious role in contemporary Florentine culture.

Attitudes towards particular workers, spinners, cobblers, and tailors are reflected

13

and resisted by Dante and Boccaccio. While luxury textiles may have only been consumed by the wealthy and elite in this period, many marginalized figures, including women and other craftspersons, were integral to various stages of their construction. By shifting the focus to the “makers,” I am able to show how both Dante and Boccaccio are deeply invested in social relations. Using Ingold’s five-pronged theory of skilled practice,

I attempt to recuperate the performative and poetic aspects of tool use by artisans in my examination of craftsmanship in the texts. With this framework I am then able to approach specific tools and the techniques and work roles that they evoke. Dante’s list of tools in Inferno 20 and Boccaccio’s recapitulation and slight modification of that list in the proemio of the Decameron form the structure upon which the rest of this chapter unfolds, with a particular focus on the spindle and the needle.

The spindle provides the opportunity to triangulate contemporary artistic depictions of spinning (many of which privilege the act over the final product and the construction of feminine virtue over accurate representation) with the historical record and literary deployment by Dante and Boccaccio. On the whole, Dante privileges metaphor in his representation of spinning, yet understanding the material always informs his metaphorical usage. Dante also signals cultural messages about virtue and femininity that Boccaccio then challenges and subverts. Four novelle, featuring female wool spinners in the Decameron, bolster these claims. In the first, Boccaccio uses the work roles of the spinner and the lanaiuolo to interrogate the concept of nobility and in the second he ennobles a female wool spinner as protagonist, de-essentializing her while allowing dominant stereotypes about other wool workers to prevail. In the third,

Boccaccio subverts gender expectations and norms while playfully engaging with the

14

rampant prostitution rumors that plagued actual spinners. The final novella in my sample literalizes the metaphorical connections between textile and text by transforming a wool cloak into a pledge. It also provides a unique opportunity to meditate on Ingold’s definition of technology with a portrayal of the mechanization of spinning in contrast to hand-spinning.

The introduction of the needle launches an exploration of needle-adjacent handiwork, additional tools, cobblers and tailors. Craft production by definition is deeply physical work, driven by the interaction of bodies and materials. I show how tailors, because of their unique access to bodies, are suspect in the cultural imaginary and how at the same time the fluctuating instability of their social and economic position within the

Florentine guild structure allows Dante and Boccaccio to invoke them for opposing aims: for both recognition and disguise. Before continuing with the needle, I examine another essential tool associated with the tailor, namely scissors. Dante links two textile metaphors involving scissors to communicate the limitations of human quests: the first based on the finite duration of clothing and the second on the definitive quality of cutting.

Pre-figuring disintegration themes in chapter three, I highlight Dante’s representation of the destructive and reparative capabilities of textile tools. Further, building on the understanding of what Lehman refers to as a materials’ affordances established in chapter one, I show how Dante’s deployment of scissors capitalizes on an intuitive understanding of the agency of the raw material that curbs what the artisan or tailor can enact upon it to create the object. Dante uses these material metaphors to both further his ontological curiosity regarding the nature of space and time and to communicate his findings to the reader.

15

Returning to the needle, I examine Dante’s uses of cruna as a geographic metaphor. Again, Dante uses tools in his quest to communicate epistemological desire, in this case to understand the mechanical workings of the universe. Needle threading evokes the technique of sewing, perverted on the terrace of envy. I use the commentary tradition to probe the terminology used for seam, noting the connections to surgery, skin, and the body, always mindful of the body of the artisan. This chapter concludes with an examination of hem as technique. I consider the material fold in Deleuzian terms of continuity and rupture as I explore Dante’s development and use of the terms lembo, vivagno, orlo, and margini. By investigating the history of these terms in the Italian language I am able to show when Dante is pioneering a particular definition and in which cases he is drawing on diverse contemporary sources (including mathematical treatises, civil statutes, medical documents, and other literary sources) in his usage. The polyvalent flexibility of these words allows Dante, beyond exploiting rhyme word potentialities and fitting into his syllabic matrix, to cultivate layered meaning. Only two references explicitly point to the tailoring technique on textiles. The topographical, metaphysical, and para-textual performances of these words de-familiarize the reader with these terms, alternately privileging some aspects while obscuring others. The hem of a garment inhabits a border space between the primary material of the garment and the exterior environment. Dante intuits this ecosystem by deploying the hem as a material signifier of his truth claims in several veracity tests set before Dante-pilgrim and his guide Virgilio on their journey through Hell. Because the hem signals information regarding the quality of materials, craftsmanship, and provenance of a textile, it is a site of knowledge and potentially, a site of deception. Thus concerns of fraud and identity are concomitant in

16

Dante’s positioning of the hem throughout this text. Finally, in an act of authorial self- positioning, Dante exploits the double meaning of hem and margin inherent in the term vivagno to illustrate the dynamic and at times reciprocal relationship between author and reader. Taking a step back from the individual technology and examining how Dante executes the concept of border as a whole, I argue that the decrease of these terms in aggregate across cantiche is a conscious choice reflecting the dissolving need for boundaries as Dante-pilgrim moves closer towards Perfection away from Hell and

Purgatory and through the heavens of Paradise.

Chapter Three: (Un)Making Cloth: Becoming and Unbecoming

Chapter three opens and closes with a consideration of why Dante includes and

Boccaccio excludes the spuola, a universal indicator of weaving, from their respective lists of tools. Examining Dante’s weaving metaphors, I uncover the theme of incompleteness, undoing, and unraveling specifically in the depiction of Piccarda in

Paradiso. I also explore moments in which Dante uses weaving to point to other modes of making, particularly making text. Dante situates the most materially grounded allusion to weaving, and a primary exemplum of woven fabric in the Commedia, in a comparison between Geryon’s skin and drappi Tartari (Tartar cloths) in Inferno 17. I use the commentary tradition paired with my own historical investigation of textile techniques to investigate this instance of mimesis. The fraudulent valence attached to this scene has consistently been associated with classical literary association, contemporary Western views of the East as untrustworthy, and the hypocrisy of corrupt popes wearing these garments.

17

By examining the material practices of production of a variety of related techniques, including samite, lampas, and velvet, I show how the valence of deception can be attributed to corruption within the mercantile and consumerist culture of medieval

Tuscany. I uncover an obsession with quality control due to rampant counterfeiting. The threat of fraud is present not only in the final textile product, but also in each step in the course of production. Dyes and selvages provide opportunities for both authenticity and deception. The choice of textile in the Geryon episode instead of another form of mimetic representation becomes abundantly clear.

Boccaccio inverts and subverts many components of Inferno 17, including

Dante’s positioning of the Tartar cloths, in Decameron 6.10. He also stages a mock reliquary wrapping practice built around the containment system for the supposed angel’s feather, actually a parrot feather. On the surface, the feather’s relative ‘uniqueness’ provides a critique on exoticism. But as a design motif it gestures towards Italian imitations of fabrics originating from China. Boccaccio’s language performs and mirrors the act of wrapping occurring at the level of plot and highlights what Ganz identifies as an important domain for the recto-verso relationship. Wrapping signifies the application of not just material, but also metaphysical and metaphorical layers. I examine what happens when the wrapped object is a person. In Decameron 4.6, Andreuola wraps her dead lover’s body in silk. I show how in this novella she becomes a reverse Piccarda: forced to break marital vows and flee towards not away from convent life. Wrapping practices reify beginnings, transitions, and endings. These examinations of woven fabrics foreground the creative potentialities and disintegrative destinies of cloth as an object in

18

transition. Finally, I show how the motif of disintegration (the verso to weaving’s recto) has been entwined with the discourse of production, all along.

19

Chapter 1: The Matter of Materials

Così fec’ io con atto e con parola per apprender da lei qual fu la tela onde non trasse infino a co la spuola

So did I with act and with word, to learn from her what was the weave thru which she did not draw the shuttle to the end Paradiso 3.94-96

The above tercet, from Paradiso, pairs the epistemological implications of apprender with three different terms associated with the making of textiles; tela, trasse, and spuola. It could also prompt one to consider, did Dante own a loom? Giotto owned one and was known to rent it out as a purely financial enterprise. According to Lisa

Monnas, Giotto was not a practicing weaver. Yet the strong relationship between painters and the textile industry is evident in late medieval paintings and in a craftsman’s handbook such as Cennino Cennini’s Il Libro dell’Arte, in part instructing artists on how to represent intricate and luxurious textiles in painting.

Using data from David Herlihy, Stuard shows the transition towards a more commoditized cloth market “available for purchase by a broad spectrum of customers” over the course of the thirteenth to fourteenth century.26 This rapid conversion, occurring over a relatively few number of generations, is perhaps one of the reasons the birth of fashion is often located in the fourteenth century. Dante stages a cultural transition from animal skins to textiles with the narrative of moral decline in Cacciaguida’s statement

26 Stuard, Susan Mosher. Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy. (Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 21.

20

about an idealized past.27 In the Heaven of Mars, Dante-pilgrim is treated to an idyllic picture of the Florentines of earlier times. The simplicity is represented in the negative, as an absence of contemporary sartorial excess in the well-known passage:

Non avea catenella, non corona, non gonne contigiate, non cintura che fosse a veder più che la persona.

No necklace and no coronal were there, and no embroidered gowns; there was no girdle that caught the eye more than the one who wore it. (Paradiso 15.100-103)28

Yet in a less discussed passage, Dante describes Bellincion Berti as wearing belts made of leather and bone, di cuoio e d’osso, and shortly thereafter describes two members of the Nerli and Vecchio families wearing unlined skins, la pelle scoperta.29

The passage, the criticism has argued, is a social commentary on decadence and decline.

It is also a historically accurate depiction of earlier dressing practices and as I show below a fragment of Dante’s continued meditation on materials and their properties.

27 Bellincion Berti vid’ io andar cinto di cuoio e d’osso, e venir da lo specchio la donna sua sanza ’l viso dipinto; e vidi quel d’i Nerli e quel del Vecchio esser contenti a la pelle scoperta, e le sue donne al fuso e al pennecchio. (Paradiso 15.112-117)

28 Stuard, in light of the above terzina, refers to Dante as “perhaps the most acute observer of the century commented on the fashion for tight fit and precious fastenings.” See Stuard, Susan Mosher. Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy. (Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 45.) I explore this passage further in chapter three.

29 See chapter two for further analysis of both tercets listed here. Also see Olson, Kristina. “Shoes, Gowns and Turncoats: Reconsidering Cacciaguida’s History of Florentine Fashion and Politics.” Dante Studies, Volume 134, (2016), 26-47.

21

1.1 Textile Industry

According to Richard Goldthwaite: “the strength of the sector [textile industry] lay in its orientation to international markets for its products.”30 Fanelli points to a wide range of

Italian merchant destinations including Mongolia, China, and Russia. According to

Tognetti, Florence was the most important European industrial city in terms of employed labor and the overall value of textile production.31 Over the course of the Duecento and

Trecento, Florence became a powerhouse of fine textile construction, first reaching dominance in wool and then later in silk. The wool industry’s vital importance to

Florence, economically, politically, and symbolically in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries cannot be overstated. It comprised the most significant sector of textile production in late medieval Italy. 32 The Arte della lana or wool guild, founded in the eleventh century, organized the industry, according to Frick, into a “corporate trade association,” one whose members, the lanaioli, or wool manufacturers, became increasingly powerful, economically, politically, and socially. 33 The cloth merchants and finishers of foreign cloths were organized under the Arte di Calimala. By the Duecento,

30 Goldwaithe, Richard. “The Florentine Wool Industry in the Late Sixteenth Century: A Case Study.” Journal of European Economic History. 32 (Winter 2003): 527-54.

31 Tognetti writes: “La Firenze del Trecento fu probabilmente la più importante città industriale europea, sia in termini di manodopera impiegata sia in termini di valore complessivo della produzione tessile confezionata ed esportata.” Tognetti, Sergio. Un’industria di lusso al servizio del grande commercio. Il mercato dei drappi serici e della seta nella Firenze del Quattrocento. Florence: Villa I Tatti, 2012, 12.

32 Franceschi, Franco. “Woollen Luxury Cloth in Late Medieval Italy.” Europe’s Rich Fabric The Consumption, Commercialisation, and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries, and Neighboring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries), Ed. Bart Lambert and Katherine Ann Wilson. New York: Routledge, 181.

33 Frick notes: “The Arte della lana, or wool guild, had organized that growing Florentine industry, active at least as early as the eleventh century, into a corporate trade association.” See Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 14.

22

Northern Italy became dominant in wool. While Milan and Florence had a high level of production, there is no evidence the textiles they were producing at the time were of high quality. Like other Italian cities they relied on local, poorer quality, wool.

A key moment of transition occurred in the1320s when Florentine companies increased wool imports.34 There was a simultaneous decline in the work of Calimala merchants refinishing French and Flemish textiles also related to a decline in Champagne fairs.35

This was followed, between 1325-1350, by a distinct turn towards luxury production most likely fueled by economic changes in the international market. Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries transaction and transport costs increased, incentivizing the trade of more expensive luxury goods.36 The luxury cloth could incur the same shipping costs as cheaper items, but provide a much higher profit margin, thus manifesting greter product differentiation. Italian wool manufacturers, lanaioli, began to dominate the international scene by producing high-end luxury cloths made of imported high-quality English wool.37 In the 1340s Florence survived the first financial crisis in the economic history of the West. Tognetti attributes Florence’s recovery to the extensive wealth distribution through growth of manufacturing sectors, specifically the textile sector and particularly the Wool Guild.

34 While this transition mostly post-dates Dante, it is contemporary and relevant to Boccaccio.

35 Franceschi, Franco. “Woollen Luxury Cloth in Late Medieval Italy.” Europe’s Rich Fabric The Consumption, Commercialisation, and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries, and Neighboring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries), Ed. Bart Lambert and Katherine Ann Wilson. New York: Routledge, 185.

36 Ibid., 184.

37 Franceschi, Franco. “Woollen Luxury Cloth in Late Medieval Italy” Europe’s Rich Fabric The Consumption, Commercialisation, and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries, and Neighboring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries), Ed. Bart Lambert and Katherine Ann Wilson. New York: Routledge, 185-186.

23

In the early part of the fourteenth century wool was approaching its commercial and demographic dominance, while the silk industry in Florence was just taking hold.

Unlike wool, with its local roots, the story of silk in Trecento Florence begins far away in both time and place. Silk cultivation appeared first in ancient China. Sericulture spread to Egypt and the Middle East not reaching Europe until the sixth century CE.38

Before 1200, with the exceptions of Sicily and Iberia during their respective eras of

Muslim rule, Europeans could only acquire silk cloth and thread from the East.39

According to Maureen Miller, the main centers of production resided in Byzantium, the

Islamic world, and further East.40 Raw silk was often shipped from Iran to Europe through the Ottoman capital, Bursa.41 Cecilia Hollberg notes prior to the Duecento, both raw silk and silk expertise resided in China until both reached the West through

Levantine merchants in Byzantium. Houghelling explains:

Silk served as a valuable commodity and a currency in the trade between Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, forging the so-called Silk Road. When sericulture was transported to Europe, silk-producing centers in Lucca, Italy, and Granada, Spain prospered from the trade in silk.42

38 Houghteling, Sylvia. “Silk.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 225.

39 c. 827-1072.

40 Miller, Maureen C. Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe c. 800–1200. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014, 8.

41 Ottoman style came to Italy through a variety of media including textiles, carpets, bookbinding, metalwork, and ceramic. Orientalizing designs dissmeminated across Europe. See Monnas, Lisa. Renaissance Velvets. London: V&A Publishing, 2012, 12.

42 Houghteling, Sylvia. “Silk.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017), 226.

24

Because of its material and symbolic value silk was often, including in early

Western Europe, restricted to use by the elite.43 Materials imported from the East and processed in Europe retained an Eastern connotation in the European cultural imaginary.

Genoa and Lucca in particular began purchasing raw silk through trade with the East and eventually Lucca became the first city in Western Europe to have market-oriented, large- scale silk production.44 Over the latter part of the twelfth century, the Lucchese silk industry vastly expanded in scope and dramatically improved in quality. By 1300, Lucca had become the center of silk weaving in Western Europe. Lucca’s rise in silk excellence mirrors the decline of similar industries in Constantinople and Muslim Iberia. The impact of Lucchese dominance is evident in the language used for silk products. The Lucchese used the word cendatum, from Byzantine Greek sendes, for silk cloth. Cendatum led to sandal and its variants to refer to a specific type of silk fabric.45 Boccaccio uses the term zendado five times in the Decameron to refer to silk cloth.46 However, by 1310, political instability and high taxation policies caused a great silk exodus; many silk workers and silk entrepreneurs left. In an unsuccessful attempt to restore dominance in the industry, the Lucchese government implemented the silk throwing machine. Over the course of the fourteenth century many of the expert Lucchese craftspersons immigrated to other Italian

43 Ibid., 226.

44 Jacoby, David. “The Movement of Silk and Silk Textiles Italy and the Mediterranean in the 12th-14th centuries.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th century Florence. Wool, silk, painting, Ed. Cecilie Hillberg Florence: Giunti, 2017, 18–29.

45 Jacoby, David. “Silk Production:” The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. Ed. Elizabeth Jeffries, John F. Haldon, Robin Cormack. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) 458-460.

46 The five instances of zendado in the Decameron include once in Decameron 3.7, referring to a green jacket/doublet, twice in Decameron 6.10 referring to a silk cloth, once in Decameron 10.6 and once in Decameron 10.9, both referring to jackets/doublets). In chapter three, I explore the zendado in Decameron 6.10 more fully.

25

city-states bringing their skills, tools, and knowledge with them. Some went on to make figured silks in Venice and sendals in Bologna. Florence, however, with its wool based textile infrastructure, merchant-banking power, political organization, geographic location and openness to immigration was uniquely suited to exploit this windfall. The

Arno provided power and water for the textile industry and access for commercial traffic to the sea. When the Ghibelline, Uguccione della Faggiuola, came to power in Lucca in

1314, many workers fled to Guelph Florence.47 While there was no local sericulture when

Florentines began producing silk, according to Tognetti, sericulture took root in the area between Pistoia and Lucca by the mid fourteenth century and eventually spread to

“territories dominated by Florentine republic particularly Tuscan Romagna.“48 The silk industry was so powerful it was hardly slowed by the plague. In fact, post plague wages for manual workers in the textile industry increased, presumably due to the high demand for labor. Wealth became more concentrated and, as Tognetti reminds us, the “plague killed people but not goods.”49 Additionally, due to the structure of production, the silk industry required much less human capital than the wool industry. A smaller number of more highly qualified craftspersons were required. While the silk industry took longer to gain a foothold, it experienced rapid growth and together with other parts of the textile sector resulted in increased social mobility for many. Tognetti describes how Florence became “the cradle of the greatest and most rapid economic and social transformation

47 Tognetti, Sergio. “Origins of the Arte della Seta.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence. Wool, Silk, Painting, Ed. Cecilie Hillberg. Florence: Giunti Editore S.p.A., 2017, 53-63.

48 Ibid., 58.

49 Ibid., 59.

26

until the Industrial revolution.”50 Rare is the historian of medieval Italian history who can resist making a reference to Dante’s subiti guadagni on this point.51

1.2 Materials

The quality of materials was one of the primary drivers of the wealth produced by the textile industry. But, what constitutes a textile material? Or, rather, where does the story of a particular material begin? It may appear apparent that cloth, made from some type of fiber, is sewn together to produce clothing. Yet individually, words like wool, silk, and linen do not signal a precise, agreed upon beginning. Before wool becomes cloth, it exists as thread spun from raw wool, which a priori had to be removed from a sheep before undergoing a cleaning process (see figure 1).

50 Tognetti, Sergio. “Florentine Economy between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence Wool, Silk, Painting, Ed. Cecilie Hillberg. Florence: Giunti Editore S.p.A., 2017, 30-42.

51 Dante’s famous complaint about the nouveau riche can be found in Inferno 16:

La gente nuova e i sùbiti guadagni orgoglio e dismisura han generate Fiorenza, in te, sì che tu già ten piagni

Newcomers to the city and quick gains have brought excess and arrogance to you, o Florence, and you weep for it already! (Inferno 16.73-75)

27

Figure 1 Raw Wool at the Burel Factory in Manteigas (Serra Da Estrela), Portugal. This image shows the residual lanolin and olive oil on unprocessed raw wool. Photographed by the author in 2017. The breed of that sheep and its geographical origin contribute to form a terroir of wool informing the aesthetic value of the finished textile product, and its location in the qualitative and pecuniary hierarchy within the market. Similarly, an examination of the silk industry leads one to investigate sericulture, the raising of silkworms, and at an earlier stage moriculture, mulberry tree cultivation. All of which is to say, these are complex human-animal-plant systems with a multitude of actors and countless factors

28

contributing to what we generally perceive of as a fixed, raw material. In essence there is hardly an adequate starting point because everything is always, already in process. Thus the ‘story’ of a material is non-linear and this investigation will move around in time as necessary to sustain a coherent narrative. Analogously, it is challenging to denote an end point to materials because clothing and the materials from which they are constructed cloth never remain static. A variety of causes can contribute to the demise of a garment.

Externally, there is the inevitable wear and tear of normal use as clothing interacts with and acts as barrier against the physical environment including temperature, humidity, and abrasive objects. On the interior side, there is the constant interaction between the material and the body of its wearer with the associated changes in bodily temperature, fluids, and salts. At rest, in storage and over time, there can be the relentless assault of insects, the purposeful re-purposing of one type of garment into another, and the unpredictable contingencies of history to contend with. In essence, what remains is a life cycle of a non-living object; an object so personal, intimate, and ripe with signifying capabilities, it begs for an investigation into its material agency.

By agency I am not suggesting magic or animism but instead I invoke that sometimes, encumbered term, agency, in the tradition of Alfred Gell. Gell defines material agency as an investigation into “the social relations in the vicinity of objects mediating social agency.”52 Much as Baxandall calls for an investigation into the historic period in which an art object was constructed, Gell shifts the focus from an historic moment onto the cultural system in which an object was created thus entreating us to examine the framework of production and circulation as well as the social-relational matrix in which an object is embedded. This therefore constitutes a thread of inquiry I

52 Gell, The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams. New Brunswick: Athione Press, 1999, 7. 29

will follow throughout this project as I loosely trace the representation of textiles in our texts from raw materials to finished textile objects always remaining vigilant to a caveat: the path is not always direct nor is it unidirectional. I am in no way implying a teleological view of textiles, but rather calling attention to patterns of experience and practice.

To understand a material’s properties, Ingold insists you must study what happens when you interact with materials. This concentration on the roles of materials in creative processes as well as the relationship between materials, tools, and producer serve us well in an examination of textiles. Lamenting over the focus in material culture on the object over the materials, Ingold implores us to examine the interfaces between one material and another, viewing each as active constituents. He insists animism is neither, magic sprinkled onto an object, nor the act of bringing things to life but rather restoring the generative forces and resistances inherent in materials. Ingold demands that we overcome the dichotomized thinking of material vs. maker, and instead urges scholars to study the interactions between makers and materials:

Like all other creatures, human beings do not exist on the ‘other side’ of materiality but swim in an ocean of materials. Once we acknowledge our immersion, what this ocean reveals to us is not the bland homogeneity of different shades of matter but a flux in which materials of the most diverse kinds – through processes of admixture and distillation, of coagulation and dispersal, and of evaporation and precipitation – undergo continual generation and transformation. The forms of things, far from having been imposed from without upon an inert substrate, arise and are borne along – as indeed we are too – within this current of materials. As with the Earth itself, the surface of every solid is but a crust, the more or less ephemeral congelate of a generative movement.53

This perspective provides a wider perspective on the processes of making and restores the often-overlooked contributions of materials to the ‘finished’ objects.

53 Ingold, Tim. “Materials against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues. Vol. 14, No. 1, (2007), 1–16.

30

Due to climate conditions, cotton cultivation—unlike silk and wool—never became extensive in Europe.54 Europeans began manufacturing cotton in the mid twelfth century. While the Italian cotton industry was larger than the Spanish, both southern

Spain and southern Italy produced small-scale lower quality cotton. Merchants, primarily from Genoa, Pisa, and Venice imported higher quality cotton into Europe. Manufactured in northern Italy, then later in Tuscany, the Italians began imitating Syrian and

Palestinian cottons.55 Most of the imported cotton, according to Riello, was not spun. The

Italians already had the sufficient infrastructure, including technology and labor, to spin and process what Riello considers “must have still been [15th century] a relatively new fibre.”56 Many cities, already set up for wool production, were able to follow the same manufacturing model of spinning in the countryside and centralizing the other processing techniques in the urban center. Because, according to Riello, “the quality of spinning did not allow for the production of cotton thread strong enough to serve as warp,” they used cotton wefts and flax warps to create a type of cloth called fustian. While the practice originated in Egypt, by the thirteenth century the Lombards were the leading producers of fustian in Europe. From 1100-1330, fustian formed one of the largest textile industries in

Italy.57

54 Riello, Giorgio. Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 46.

55 Ibid., 73.

56 Ibid., 49.

57 According to Gilbert, fustian appears to be constructed in the same way as velvet with a sheared surface. It is described as a coarse twilled cotton cloth sometimes made with a linen warp and cotton weft. Pipponnier explains: “The word fustian can be found in records as early as the 11th and 12th centuries and is associated with heavily wefted materials, especially those with weft floats that could be cut to produce pile”. See Piponnier, Francoise and Perrine Mane. Dress in the Middle Ages. Translated by Caroline Beamish. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

31

Combining linen and cotton produces a lightweight, comfortable wearing textile and cheaper, lighter clothes were popular among the poor. Italian cottons were traded all over Europe, North Africa, and Syria. Yet there are no overt references to fustian, fustagno, or cotton in the Commedia or the Decameron. However, as Riello explains, “in

Europe the manufacturing of cotton coincided with the introduction of new textiles and garments such as doublets and quilted short jackets (occasionally padded), and they were probably also used for sails.”58 Many of the finished textile objects we encounter in the text could be made partially or completely of cotton. And the structure of the industry provides a useful contrastive example in the examination of work roles in chapter two.

But due to Dante and Boccaccio’s relative silence on cotton, a further investigation of cotton as a raw material lies outside the boundaries of this investigation.59

1.2.1 Linen

Lino appears as a hapax in both Dante’s Commedia and Boccaccio’s Decameron referring to thread in the former and cloth woven from flax in the latter.60 The processing, weaving, and finishing of flax fibers was primarily conducted in rural areas. The construction of linen garments, Piponnier explains, was often under women’s jurisdiction

58 Riello, Giorgio. Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 73.

59 Another interesting hybrid cloth to consider is the mezzalana or santellaro. Franceschi describes it as: “a peculiar creation of local [Verona] cloth entrepreneurs combining a wool weft and a warp which used a standard type of linen yarn produced in Lombardy and intended initially for the cotton sector.” It was exported from the Veneto and Padanian plain. See Franceschi, Franco. “Woollen Luxury Cloth in Late Medieval Italy.” Europe’s Rich Fabric The Consumption, Commercialisation, and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries, and Neighboring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries), Ed. Bart Lambert and Katherine Ann Wilson. New York: Routledge, 182.

60 Because thread can be spun out of a variety of materials including linen, silk and wool, I address the Dantean instance more fully in chapter two along with other language around thread, fili, and spinning.

32

and therefore functioned outside of the regulations of the guild system.61 Like other vegetable fibers such as hemp and cotton, linen degrades quickly over time. With little to no extant samples from this time period we must rely on textual and representational sources about the garments themselves. Unfortunately, there is a scarcity of textual evidence regarding linen perhaps because of the intimate character of many of the final products; typically, undergarments, swaddling clothes, and veils. Sarti explains that the

Romans wore an inner tunic and so did the Lombards. By the thirteenth century, the general practice of wearing lighter garments next to the skin and heavier garments overtop spread. Multipurpose in its application, linen was sometimes waxed to fabricate waterproof window blinds. Linen could be combined with other raw materials for performance gains: for example the fustian discussed above or mixed with silk for improved performance in bedding, drapery, underclothing, lightweight summer clothing, and veiling applications.62

It is this set of attributes, particularly linen’s delicacy and transparency, that

Boccaccio exploits in Decameron 10.6, the story of old King Charles and the two young girls, Ginevra and Isotta. After setting the scene, Fiammetta begins the story. Knight

Messer Neri degli Ubertà leaves Florence and settles under King Charles’ protection by a fishpond. One day King Charles, visiting his garden, orders Count Guido di Monforte to sit on one side of him and Neri on the other. After an extravagant meal two young, fifteen year old, girls appear on the scene. Fiammetta details the fit and silhouette of their

61 Pipponnier, Francoise, and Perrine Mane. Dress in the Middle Ages. Translated by Caroline Beamish. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. 23.

62 According to Gilbert, “in the late 14th century, Flemish linens were known as the finest. Some samples of linen damask show a thread count of between 60 to 200 threads per inch, making them suitable for fine veiling.” Gilbert, Rosalie. “Medieval Fabrics & Sewing.” Rosalie’s Medieval Woman, http://rosaliegilbert.com/fabricsandsewing.html. Accessed March 2018.

33

garments long before naming or identifying the girls: “eran vestite d’un vestimento di lino sottilissimo e bianco come neve in su le carni, il quale dalla cintura in sù era strettissimo e da indi ’n giù largo a guise d’un padiglione e lungo info a’ piedi” (They were dressed in garments of the thinnest linen, as white as snow upon their skin, fitting tightly at the waist and extending from there in bell shaped fashion, all the way down to their feet [Dec. 10.6.11]). The description of the raw material, texture, grade, color, and fit of the garments both reflects historical practices and simultaneously transmits cultural messages about purity and desire. The superlatives in the above passage indicate the performance qualities of linen that differentiate it from other materials, presumably wool and cotton. Boccaccio’s descriptor, strettissimo, functions both as an erotic signifier and a suggestion that their garment was de rigueur. According to many textile scholars, a tighter silhouette began trending in the fourteenth century. Sottilissimo reflects the delicate nature of the raw material itself and cues linen’s aptness for undergarments. An examination of Dante’s deployment of lino reveals the contribution of an additional erotic charge. Boccaccio’s le carni recalls Dante’s pairing of his hapax, lino, with carne in

Purgatorio 25 in a passage that underscores the intimate relationship between bodies and clothes and reinforces the sensuality communicated through luxury textiles.63 Boccaccio continues a sustained meditation on the visual, tactile, and performance attributes of linen as a material in his subsequent description of the two girls emerging from the fishpond:

63 Quando Làchesis non ha più del lino, solvesi da la carne, e in virtute ne porta seco e l’umano e ’l divino:

And when Lachesis lacks more thread, then soul’s divided from the flesh; potentially, it bears with it the human and divine (Purgatorio 25.79-81)

34

“essendosi tutto il bianco vestimento e sottile loro appiccato alle carni nè quasi cosa alcuna del dilicato lor corpo celando” (their white, thin garments clinging to their skin concealing hardly any part of their delicate bodies [Dec. 10.6.17]). These properties of linen are essential to the plot. Linen’s inability to effectively conceal the girls’ bodies drives the desire of the king. Returning to idea of metaphor itself, Lakoff describes how

“the very systematicity that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another (e.g. comprehending an aspect of arguing in terms of battle) will necessarily hide other aspects of the concept.”64 Metaphors give us a partial understanding by hiding some aspects while revealing others. The ability to simultaneously reveal and conceal is a metatextual performance of metaphor, itself.

1.2.2 Wool

Boccaccio references wool both explicitely and implicitely in the Decameron; he uses the term lana seven times. Four of those instances revolve around spinning wool and reside in Decameron 4.7, described in detail in chapter two.65 The other three references to lana occur in Decameron 2.10, as a comical aside, and more substantially in

Decameron 8.2. 66 While the word lana is never uttered in Decameron 7.3, the cloaks

64 Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, 11.

65 In addition to lana, Boccaccio uses a variety of wool and wool-adjacent terminology such as lanaiuolo, panni, and stracci.

66 In Decameron 2.10, after the pirate Paganino da Monaco steals Messer Ricciardo’s wife Bartolomea, she refuses to return to her old, impotent husband. When confronted she defends her choice by lamenting about how her husband avoided sex. She then invokes a wool metaphor to brag about the sexual satisfaction she now enjoys with Paganino: “Anzi di dí e di notte ci si lavora e battecisi la lana“ (we beat our wool all day and night, [Dec. 2.10.33]). While the content is carnal there is a folksy and slightly crass quality to the deployment of wool here in contrast to the more erotic tone usually attached to silk metaphors.

35

worn by Frate Rinaldo, described as panni, are unmistakably constructed of wool.67

These cloaks inhabit a hybrid, liminal space that uses the range of typologies within wool to reveal inherent tensions between the categories of clerical and lay. Using a robust knowledge of textile practices, Boccaccio is able to tap into contemporary debates about luxury and excess while pushing the boundaries of these and other categories. Wool textiles in particular lend themselves to nuance because the spectrum of products produced from wool varied enormously in quality, cost, processing, and finishing techniques.

Elissa begins the tale by introducing the protagonist, Rinaldo. Falling in love with

Madonna Agnesa and unable to seduce her, he becomes a friar and temporarily turns away from his vices. But He then returns to them: “senza lasciar l’abito” (without abandoning his friar’s habit [Dec. 7.3.7]). The vices are described as taking pleasure in his appearance particularly in the way he dresses: “cominciò a dilettarsi d’apparere e di vestir di buon panni e d’essere in tutte le sue cose leggiadretto e ornato” (he began to take pleasure in the way he looked, in expensive material for his habits, in being gallant and elegant in everything he did [Dec. 7.3.7]). Rinaldo’s refusal to give up his abito, in terms of both his practices and his clothing, becomes the essential hermeneutic key for this novella.68 Boccaccio sets up the apparent tension between retaining the habit and expressing a desire for luxury textiles. Muzzarelli articulates one of the implicit functions of the abito when she writes: “L’abito fratesco o monastic non era importante solo per

67 I published an earlier version of the following content on Frate Rinaldo. See Van Visco, Julianna. “Beyond Mimesis: Boccaccio’s Engagement with Wool Production in the Decameron.” In Boccaccio and His World Proceedings of the Third Triennial Meeting of the American Boccaccio Association. Duke University, September-October 2016, Ed.Valerio Cappozzo, Martin Eisner and Timothy Kircher, (2018:15), 173–87.

68 My gratitude to Professor Teodolinda Barolini for bringing my attention to Boccaccio’s abito pun.

36

connotare l’appartenenza a questo o quell’Ordine e Congregazione, ma doveva rappresentare la virtù di chi lo indossava e si riteneva anzi che in qualche misura ne partecipasse.”69 Boccaccio locates the contradiction within the habit, itself, because its existence connotes a religious function while simultaneously the raw material or panni of which it is made suggests a proclivity towards earthly pleasures and values. In fact, the narrator Elissa embeds Frate Rinaldo’s interest in fine material within in a list of compositional activities: “a fare delle canzoni e de’ sonetti e delle ballate e a cantare, e tutto pieno d’altre cose a queste simili” (in composing songs, sonnets and ballads, in dancing, and in spending his time in all sorts of similar activities [Dec. 7.3.7]) In this way, Boccaccio implicitly connects textile and narrative.

The early association of literary production with Friar Rinaldo associating early in the novella is functions as a red herring because it is Madonna Agnesa’s narrative production that ultimately saves them both. In the proemio, Boccaccio famously calls on ladies in love to pay attention to his stories leaving to the rest the tools of textile production: “in soccorso e rifugio de quelle che amano, per ciò che all’altre è assai l’ago e ‘l fuso e l’arcolaio” (as support and diversion for those ladies in love to those others who are not I leave the needle, spindle, and wool winder [Dec, proemio,13]). This proposed separation of literary and textile production is nothing more than an illusion.

Boccaccio repeatedly engages in a discourse on the relationship between wit and dressing. In the case of Decameron 7.3, he focuses on the elaborate dressing practices of the male character and the wit and storytelling capabilities of the female protagonist.

Further, Boccaccio marshalls knowledge about production practices to interrogate the

69 Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina. Guardaroba medievale. Vesti e societá dal XIII al XVI secolo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999, 298. 37

boundaries of various social categories from lay/clerical to masculine/feminine and extravagant/ascetic. Boccaccio uses wool as a conduit for his social critique.

An appreciation of fashion is precisely the earthly value prized in other lay protagonists:

Bergamino of Decameron 1.7 and Maestro Simone of Decameron 8.9 come to mind.70

However this predilection signals a problem for Friar Rinaldo. Stuard notes, “A fourteenth-century man made a stark choice early in his life when he chose between taking vows in a mendicant order and forsaking riches, or remaining ‘in the world’ and adopting the badges and attire that reflected his wealth and standing.”71 Elissa emphasizes the discrepancy between Rinaldo’s habit and his interest in his appearance by addressing the brigata directly, asking why this is even a matter of discussion: “Ma che dico io di frate Rinaldo nostro di cui parliamo?” (Why do I go on this way about this

Brother Rinaldo of ours? [Dec. 7.3.8.]) Boccaccio’s use of hypophora bolsters Elissa’s ability to take the brigata and the reader on a narrative detour describing friars and their wicked ways, a topic woven throughout the Decameron.

Putting aside Decameron 7.3 for a moment (although I shall return to it), textiles materialize both prominently and discretely in novella 3.7’s diatribe against the greed and hypocrisy of the clergy.72 In Decameron 3.7, Emilia suggests that the clergy’s desire to

70 In Decameron 1.7, Bergamino seems to take pride in his three nice suits and uses his wit and storytelling abilities by recounting story of Primas and the Abbot of Cluny to get his wardrobe reimbursed by Messer Can della Scala. In Decameron 8.9, Maestro Simone, in an attempt to become a member of an imagined, elite club boasts about his clothing: “le più belle robe che medico di Firenze” (“he has the most elegant wardrobe of any doctor in Florence,” [Dec. 8.9.50]). For more on protagonists in relation to the practices of male social clubs see Barolini, Teodolinda “Sociology of the Brigata: Gendered Groups in Dante, Forese, Folgore, Boccaccio — From ‘Guido, i’ vorrei’ to Griselda,” Italian Studies, 67:1, 2012, 4 -22.

71 Stuard, Susan Mosher. Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy. Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, 106.

72 In fact, Vittore Branca draws our attention to a passage from Dec.3.7 on the bad habits of clerics. Branca observes: “[I]l passo seguente è uno dei più caratteristici sfoghi del B. contro il malcostume del clero; ricorda specialmente quello nella novella III 7, 30–43.” [Branca 1080(n13)].

38

preach one set of behaviors yet live by another is ludicrous: “l’avere risposto ‘Fate quello che noi diciamo e non quello che noi facciamo’ estimano che sia degno scaricamento d’ogni grave peso, quasi più alle pecore sia possibile l’esser constanti e di ferro che a’ pastori” (they say, ‘Do as we say and not as we do,’ thinking that this is a proper excuse for every serious offense, as if it were possible for sheep to be more constant and steadfast than their shepherds! [Dec. 3.7.39]). This sheep reference does more than rehash the Biblical trope. Sheep can function as a gesture towards the vast framework of the wool industry and often appear in the text paired with textile appraisal. In this case it directly follows a critique of mendicant dressing practices. Tedaldo compares worthy friars of the past to contemporary friars in terms of their dressing practices and behaviors.

While the worthy friars of the past wore a simple, rougher style, “furono ordinate strette e misere e di grossi panni” (ordered their habits to be tight-fitting, shabby, and made of coarse cloth [Dec. 3.7.34]), the contemporary friars wear visually and tactilely appealing garments: “le fanno larghe e doppie e lucide e di finissimi panni” (have their habits cut wide, and they are lined, made with a smooth texture and the finest cloth [Dec. 3.7.34]).

The contemporary friars are accused of having a more pontifical style and of parading around: “come con le lor robe i secolari fanno” (the way the layman would show off his clothes [Dec.3.7.34]). Boccaccio selects categories such as pontiffs and laymen because of the distinctive clothing expectations for each. Noting the distinction between monks and secular clergy, Muzzarelli reports: “Non solo i monaci, ma anche il clero secolare seguiva regole precise d’abbigliamento: la veste clericale non doveva essere tanto austera come quella indossata dai monaci (o per lo meno ad essi prescritta), ma nemmeno

39

lussuosa.”73 There are stakes for violating those expectations. Furthermore, Boccaccio directly links sartorial choices to bad behavior when Tedaldo describes how corrupt friars catch women in the drapes of their opulent garments: “con le fimbrie ampissime avvolgendosi, molte pinzochere, molte vedove, molte altre sciocche femine e uomini d’avilupparvi sotto s’ingegnano, e è loro maggior sollecitudine che d’altro essercizio”

(wrapping themselves in the ample folds of their garments, try to take in many a sanctimonious lady, widow, and many another silly person, both men and women alike, and this concern of theirs they place above all other duties” [Dec. 3.7.35]). In this context, textile scholar Elizabeth Crowfoot notes the important influence of finishing techniques on how a cloth performs including drape. She describes how finishing methods could make certain techniques, such as double folded hems, unnecessary and could provide opportunities for further decorative embellishment.74

The elaborate finishing techniques associated with higher quality woolens allow the fabrics to drape and make Boccaccio’s humorous image possible. By linking garment attributes with moral weaknesses in Decameron 3.7, Boccaccio lays a foundation for an argument about clerical excess that he is able to revisit again on day seven from a new perspective. Returning now to Frate Rinaldo’s story in Decameron 7.3, one can see that the ingredients, primarily the language, remain quite similar: from day three to day seven leggiadra becomes leggiadretto and finissimi panni becomes panni fini. Yet each term carries over to the next novella the meaning embedded in its prior use creating a

73 Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina. Guardaroba medievale. Vesti e societá dal XIII al XVI secolo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999, 301.

74 Crowfoot, Elisabeth Francis Pritchard, and Kay Staniland. Textiles and Clothing c.1150-1450. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2001, 5. For more on the elaborate decorations found on ecclesiastical cloaks see Levi Pisetzky, Rosita. Storia del Costume. Milano: Istituto editoriale italiano, 1964. 2:201–209.

40

cumulative effect. Janet Levarie Smarr notes McWilliam’s query regarding the positional location of both diatribes within the Decameron–one third and two thirds through the text–and Smarr goes further to suggest that the “neat reversal” of digits in 3.7 and 7.3 was intentional on Boccaccio’s part as a means of linking these two novella. I agree with

Smarr and would add that the way textiles are treated in each of the diatribes further cements their connection.

In Decameron 7.3, Elissa explains how friars signal their wicked proclivities with their dressing, self-care, and eating/drinking habits. She describes friars luxuriating in extravagant ointments, creams, and perfumes — all items that suggest attention to and indulgence in the body: “d’apparir morbidi ne’ vestimenti e in tutte le cose loro” (or so effeminate in their dress and all their affairs [Dec. 7.3.9]).75 The allegation that friars dress effeminately is not only a condemnation of clerics and an allusion to women’s vanity, but also a nod to the gender reversal implicit in day seven’s theme, tricks wives play on their husbands. Earlier in the text Boccaccio began building an argument for the inverse relationship between women’s wit and their attention to clothing. In Decameron

1.10, for example, Pampinea laments how few women understand witty remarks because they are overly focused on the body and its ornamentation often expressed through wearing bright colors and fancy patterns [Dec. 1.10.3]. On day seven Boccaccio makes a few adjustments to the equation. He links a man’s overzealous focus on clothing to what will turn out to be a lack of wit or skill on his part. Yet here, Madonna Agnesa’s quick thinking saves Friar Rinaldo. There are no descriptions of her sartorial choices. In this

75 Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella translate morbidi in this instance as effeminate. Branca glosses morbidi as delicati, raffinati.

41

case, Boccaccio complicates his discourse on gender by reversing the categories and examining the relationship between clothing and wit from multiple perspectives and different identities.

Boccaccio embeds the most nuanced textile moment of Decameron 7.3 in the anthypophora portion of this periphrastic detour. Elissa compares presumable clothes- horse Rinaldo to Saints Dominic and Francis whose sartorial expressions were characterized by asceticism: “e che nè san Domenico nè san Francesco senza aver quatro cappe per uno” (and that neither Saint Dominic nor Saint Francis ever owned four cloaks apiece [Dec. 7.3.12]). Similar to the initially referenced habit, these cappe are also polysemous. The term cappa may signify a cloak, cape, mantle or gown but can also denote an ecclesiastic tunicle or tunicella.76 Medieval ecclesiastical textile scholar

Maureen Miller reports cappa originally referred to an ecclesiastical cloak or cape, but later developed into a closed cloak called the cappa clausa. Miller explains that eventually this cappa clausa came to be defined over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the required clerical street attire “that is what the clergy wore outside of church.”77

Miller explains how the two styles in clerical wear, opulent and simple, arose amidst changing ideas about the display of power and holiness. Twelfth and thirteenth century ecclesiastical legislation limited the use of the highly ornate style to liturgical functions while the simpler style was used by clerics outside of the church and official functions.

Miller posits a political motivation for this dichotomy; she cites the danger of “clerics looking like rulers” at time when the lines of power between monarchs and the Church

76 Miller, Maureen C. Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 246.

77 Ibid., 248.

42

were shifting.78 Similarly two opposing thought currents regarding the relationship between holiness and sumptuousness arose over time; one equated holiness with luxury materials and the other, favored by ascetic reform movements, aligned holiness with a simpler, rough style. Stuard also investigates this bifurcation and notes that to medieval observers “any new, opulent, and fashionable attire ran the risk of diminishing a person’s spiritual standing by connoting crass worldliness, precisely the opposite message from that which a devout person intended. On the other hand, appropriately rich dress might convey proper messages about obligations and calling, even among the holy.”79 In

Decameron 7.3, Friar Rinaldo’s cappe dwell in a liminal space revealing tensions between the categories of clerical and lay, hypocritical and authentic, and masculine and feminine.

Rinaldo never fully commits to clerical life. Yet he wears the uniform as a costume, allowing him access to privileged spaces. In Decameron 7.3 all of Rinaldo’s actions occur outside of the sanctuary therefore his cappe are appropriate in the sense that they meet the cultural expectations for what clergy wear outside of their liturgical functions. Nevertheless his cappe are tremendously inappropriate due to both their of the quantitative and qualitative extravagance. First let us examine how Rinaldo’s cappe are extravagant in quantity. The numerical assessment “not four cloaks apiece” reflects the historical reality of the cost of clothing and participates in what Miller terms a medieval debate about the appearance of holiness. For example, Muzzarelli notes:

Sappiamo che alla fine del Medioevo gli appartenenti al clero indossavano quotidianamente un mantello o tabarro nero di forme differenziate: più o meno largo, con

78 Ibid., 248.

79 Ibid., 27.

43

maniche ora fluttuanti e ora corte, dotato di diversi tipi di allacciature. Sotto al mantello portavano una veste di drappo di lana aperta anteriormente e foderata con un tessuto sempre di lana, ma più sottile.80

However, as a signifier of his clerical status they draw attention to his profane appetites.

According to Carole Frick, it would have taken approximately eight braccia of cloth to construct a cappa and scapulare for a friar in mid fifteenth-century Florence. Because of the enormous resources needed to produce good quality cloth, the price could run from three to twenty florins per braccio depending on the raw materials and processes. To contextualize, Frick notes the estimated annual earnings for a weaver of wool in

Quattrocento Florence to have been approximately forty-three florins per year. Textile historians Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane report that while difficult to ascertain the average working person may have owned one cloak.81 This puts Rinaldo’s wardrobe acquisitions in direct opposition to the values of the individuals and groups who preached the renunciation of worldly goods.82

But what type of cappe was friar Rinaldo donning? Next Elissa begins to qualitatively describe the sorts of robes Saints Francis and Dominic did not wear in order to contrast their humble style with that of Rinaldo. The garments of Francis and Dominic

80 Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina. Guardaroba medievale. Vesti e societá dal XIII al XVI secolo. (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 302.

81 Pipponnier, Francoise, and Perrine Mane. Dress in the Middle Ages. Translated by Caroline Beamish. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). 44.

82 Particularly mendicants. On the implicit connection between Saint Francis and clothing, Maureen Miller situates the mendicant rejection or critique of ornate clerical clothing within the larger context of twelfth- century legislation against superfluity, a larger discussion about status and power between royal courts and the church: “Holy men and women renouncing wealth and dedicating themselves to the care of the poor and sick appear in the twelfth century, but the orders founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic of Guzmán in the early thirteenth century gave this critique of a more affluent society new force and prominence. Implicitly or explicitly, the friars’ way of life was also a critique of the secular clergy. Clothing figured prominently in this critique” Miller, Maureen C. Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014, 139.

44

were simpler in color, or dye processing, and lower in quality: “non di tintillani né d’altri panni gentili ma di lana grossa fatti e di natural colore, a cacciare il freddo e non a apparere si vestissero” (nor did they ever dress up in finely dyed, elegant garments but, rather, in coarse, woolen robes of natural colors made to keep out the cold rather than to appear stylish [Dec.7.3.12]). Noting the connections between particular processes and value systems, Muzzarelli explains: “Caratterizzavano l’abito dei monaci la semplicità del tessuto e l’assenza di colore, nel rispetto della teoria secondo la quale ogni tintura è menzogna.”83 In this densely packed section of text Boccaccio reveals an accomplished understanding of the raw materials and processes involved in textile production and directly links these characteristics to the motivations of the wearer and the garments’ functionality.

The distinction here between two types of cloths, fine and coarse, makes a clear distinction yet belies the complexity of the contemporary wool market. According to textile scholar Ruth Gilbert, there were approximately fifty different grades of wool by the thirteenth century. While Boccaccio’s portrayal of degradation in values over time as expressed through excesses in clothing is a common trope, the increased availability of high quality cloth very much reflects the reality of the narrative arc of the history of the wool industry in Italy.84 From the twelfth to the fourteenth century or roughly from the time of Saint Francis to the time of the writing of the Decameron there was a dramatic shift in the primary types of textiles circulating in the market place from low-quality,

83 Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina. Guardaroba medievale. Vesti e societá dal XIII al XVI secolo. (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 299.

84 For more on this theme in the Cacciaguida episode of Dante’s Paradiso, see Olson, Kristina M. “The Ethical and Sartorial Geography of the Far East: Tartar Textiles in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Esposizioni,” Le Tre Corone. Rivista internazionale di studi su Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio VI (2019):125- 139.

45

cheap, rough cloth to, first, the importation of and, then, the imitation and production of higher-quality English wools used to create expensive, opulent textiles.85

Munro cites fustian as the most common material for clothing in the twelfth through the early fourteenth century describing it as a “lightweight hybrid, composed of a linen (flax) warp yarn and a cotton weft yarn.” Similar coarse, cheaper Italian wools marketed under various other names were widely circulating. Prior to the fourteenth century, Tognetti reports: “the artifacts [the Florentines] produced did not have those technical and qualitative features that would later make them attractive to many non- regional markets.”86 Citing Hoshino Hidetoshi and Richard A. Goldthwaite, Munro notes that in the latter part of the thirteenth century Italian merchants began importing panni alla francesca, high-quality woolen cloth from England and France constructed of

English wool. Due to several factors, including increased taxes and a collapse in commercial networks, there was a decline in the production of cheaper fustians and worsted cloths for export and a simultaneous rise in the production of high-quality luxury cloth for the export market with a focus on imitating the panni alla francesca. Florentines were importing high quality wool from England and applying sophisticated finishing techniques in imitation of the style of the cloths being produced in Flanders and

Brabant.87

85 See Munro, John H. “The Rise, Expansion, and Decline of the Italian Wool-Based Cloth Industries, 1100–1730: A Study in International Competition, Transaction Costs, and Comparative Advantage.” Studies in Medieval Renaissance History, 3.9, (2012), 62.

86 Tognetti, Sergio. “Florentine Economy between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence Wool, Silk, Painting, Ed. Cecilie Hollberg. Florence: Giunti Editore S.p.A., 2017, 39.

87 Ibid., 31-41.

46

Munro differentiates among the numerous gradations of quality in wool products by sorting them into three broad categories: high-quality woolens, lower-quality worsteds and hybrid serges.88 Because generally shorter fibers result in a tighter weave and stronger cloth, they were used for both the warp and the weft of higher quality woolens.

These short, curly fibers were often imported from England and then greased with olive oil, then the warp yarn was combed and then spun on a drop spindle. This procedure strengthened the fibers and allowed them to withstand the tension of being stretched out on a horizontal loom. In contrast, the weft yarns were carded and then spun on a spinning wheel. This faster process resulted in a yarn that was too weak for a warp but strong enough for the weft. Woven together, a strong warp and weaker weft produce cloth with a desirable felting property.89 Fulling and tenting would then strengthen and clean the cloth. Straight, long fibers, neither greased nor oiled produced lower quality worsteds.

These fibers were combed rather than carded and resulted in a lighter weight cloth, providing a different appearance and handfeel. Worsteds have a visible weave, or twill, and without the fulling process exhibit no felting effect. Weaving together a warp, composed of spindle spun long fibers, and a weft, composed of short greased fibers spun on a spinning wheel produced serge hybrids. Like the higher quality woolens, the serge hybrid cloths had to be partially fulled to remove the grease or butter used for the weft preparation. But similar to the lower quality worsteds the serge hybrids were not napped.

88 I am indebted to John Munro’s excellent account of wool processing for the descriptions found here. See Munro, John H. “The Rise, Expansion, and Decline of the Italian Wool-Based Cloth Industries, 1100–1730: A Study in International Competition, Transaction Costs, and Comparative Advantage.” Studies in Medieval Renaissance History 3.9 (2012): 45-207.

89 Scholar and textile conservator Elena Phipps defines felting as “a process to raise a napped surface on a woven fabric, usually with a combination of hot water, abrasion, and repeated physical agitation (beating).” See Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 33.

47

The amalgam functionality and handfeel of these cloths led them to become a model for lighter weight textiles of the sixteenth century. Each combination of raw material and process resulted in different characteristics for the finished cloth and how it would appear, interact with, and move on the body of the wearer.

Therefore, when our narrator Elissa articulates terms such as panni gentili and tintillani she is evoking specific materials and processes that resulted in expensive luxury cloth, most likely high-quality wool that was imported from England and then heavily finished in Italy primarily for export. Franceschi cites a reference to panno tintillano in a statue by the Arte della Lana and asserts it refers to a specific dyeing process, specifically wool that is dyed before being spun.90 Frick views the panno tintillano not as a luxury fabric per se but rather as an imitation of luxury fabric and far superior to other contemporary Florentine productions.91 With lana grossa Elissa is signaling the cheap, coarse worsted cloths that flooded the domestic Mediterranean market in the late thirteenth and fourteenth century. Much of the raw wool for these cloths came from

Northern Europe, North Africa, and Italy, and was generally of lower quality than the

English wools.

After a quantitative and qualitative assessment of cloaks, Elissa concludes with a critique of purpose. For Saints Francis and Dominic, functionality reigned supreme: “a cacciare il freddo e non apparere si vestissero” (to keep out the cold rather than to appear stylish [Dec. 7.3.12]). This description vividly recalls the diatribe against the hypocrisy of

90 Franceschi, Franco. “Wool in 14th Century Florence. The Affirmation of an Important Luxury Production.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence Wool, Silk, Painting. Ed. Cecilie Hollberg. Florence: Giunti Editore S.p.A., 2017, 47.

91 Frick notes: “In the Trecento, the imitation had been panni tintillano, which, while not necessarily a luxury fabric per se, was probably superior to other Florentine productions of the time.” See Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 100. 48

friars from Decameron 3.7, examined above. By explicitly articulating the functional aspects–keeping out the cold vs. looking good–of the sartorial choices, Elissa engages in an ethical indictment of Rinaldo’s character buttressed by the earlier diatribe and communicated to the reader through shared knowledge of the ubiquitous textile market and through the repetition of its lexicon.92 Subsequently, friar Rinaldo wears another important cloak. Boccaccio returns to the cappa to denote the liminal space between two aspects of Rinaldo’s identity insert M dash as a man and as member of the clergy—only this time from the other side of the divide. In the previous iteration even dressed in his cappa he could not escape his inner wicked desires, here when he is essentially naked he still wears his tonicella unable to completely shed his friarly identity. Rinaldo pronounces to Madonna Agnesa that in the instant he takes off his cloak she will see him differently as though a man and a friar were not overlapping categories: “qualora io avrò questa cappa fuor di dosso, che me la traggo molto agevolmente, io vi parrò uno uomo fatto come gli altri e non frate” (the moment I remove this cloak, which I can remove quite easily, you will see me as a man made just like all the others and not as a friar [Dec.

7.3.15]). As he removes this cappa, Rinaldo hopes to shed the last vestige of holiness from his identity as friar, and thus use a change in clothing to jump from one category to another. He also wishes to drastically recategorize and sexualize his relationship with her.

Once the affair has commenced Elissa describes the moment in which they could potentially be discovered. Rinaldo’s state of undress is the most direct signal of their culpability. Interestingly, she clarifies what she means by spogliato, which is not the literal sense of complete undress but the more relevant sense of partial divestiture of his

49

clerical identity: “cioè senza cappa e senza scapolare, in tonicella” (that is, no cloak and hood, standing there in just a vest [Dec. 7.3.26]).

Thus, the cloak and hood form central components of his dress and their absence signals a state of undress. Yet the presence of the tonicella is not enough to consider him clothed. Miller defines the tunicle as a vestment quite similar to the dalmatic between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. It was associated with subdeacons and acolytes.93

Despite the narrower sleeves and lacking clavi, the tunicle, Miller explains, could be brightly colored and ornamented, which is very much in line with Friar Rinaldo’s tastes.94

The tunicle provides yet another opportunity for Rinaldo to express and reveal his values sartorially. Much like the cappa, which was removed, the tonicella in this context maintains some clerical association yet its ecclesiastical status is perhaps even more diluted. Despite Rinaldo’s efforts to shed his friarly identity during his amorous adventures he cannot completely dismantle them. The tonicella acts as a vestigial remnant of the identity he took on when he became a friar.

The tonicella also of course signals his near nakedness. In the moment of potential discovery, Rinaldo realizes that if he were dressed he might be able to escape.

But Madonna Agnesa more capably realizes that the solution lies not in Rinaldo transitioning from a state of naked to clothed, but rather going from a state of unclothed to re-vested in his liminally clerical garb and attaching a clerical significance to his visit

93 Miller, Maureen C. Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014, 248.

94 Miller defines clavi as “stripes often woven into a dalmatic.” She also notes “Surviving vestments and inventories indicate that the colorful silks and golden embroidery used for chasubles and dalmatics in the tenth and eleventh centuries were being deployed on tunicles and albs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.” See Miller, Maureen C. Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800– 1200. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014, 249.

50

to her home. By redressing him in his cappa she takes the first step in re-contextualizing him in his role as a friar, and by creating the story of the worm exorcism she narratively justifies his presence there. The inherent performativity of the cappa lends sufficient credibility to the exorcism conceit. This act of redressing allows him to escape punishment but more importantly it allows Madonna Agnesa to escape the consequences of her actions and fulfill the mandate of Day seven, to trick her husband. Textiles continue to form a link to narrative production and narrative production saves these protagonists just as the practice of storytelling saves the brigata in the frame narrative.

Textiles and dressing-related terms abound in this novella and many others. In just a few words Boccaccio communicates quality differences in various types of wool, denotes physical and social functions (provision of warmth and fashionable appearance), signals an ethical debate regarding how friars should self-present, points to potential discord between moral character and outward appearance, links clothing quantity directly to a measure of wealth, and catalogues two dye processes for wool textiles. The representation of these textile objects in the text is a reflection of the saturation of the textile industry in the late-medieval Florentine economy and culture. As such they carry multiple layers of meaning and association, which allow them to function as active tools in Boccaccio’s discourse on wit and gender. The semiotics of clothing allows characters to straddle different identities; understanding the raw materials and processing can uncover additional valences. Just as there are a multitude of gradations of wool, there are gradations of identity and, much as Rinaldo continually shifts between multiple layers of identity, few of Boccaccio’s protagonists remain fixed in only one category.

51

In Florence, the spectrum of quality in wool production eventually exhibited a spatialized, geographic character. San Martino, San Pancrazio, San Piero Scheraggio, and

Oltrarno were the four main neighborhoods with a concentration of wool manufacture.95

In 1409 in an effort to further control production, the Arte della Lana restricted the use of

English wool allowing and mandating its use by solely the lanaioli at San Martino. The other three neighborhoods were limited to lower quality wool. While this particular statute postdates our authors, it regulated a spectrum of products produced and circulating in the Trecento and attempted to resolve a longstanding quality control problem that did not arise overnight. Franceschi notes: “thus, a significant distinction among Florentine producers was made; there were those who worked in the better district, the elites of textile entrepreneurs, and these in the remaining three areas, where the use of

Mediterranean wool prevailed and which were increasingly known as the conventi di

Garbo.”96 The concentration of wool production and qualitative ranking brings clarity to

Boccaccio’s choice of precise geographic specificity in Decameron 7.1. Protagonist and master spinner, Gianni Lotteringhi lives in San Pancrazio: “Egli fu già in Firenze nella contrada di San Brancazio uno stamaiuolo, il quale fu chiamato Gianni Lotteringhi, uomo piú avventurato nella sua arte che savio in altre cose” (There dwelt of yore at Florence, in the quarter of San Pancrazio, a master-spinner, Gianni Lotteringhi by name, one that had prospered in his business, but had little understanding of aught else [Dec. 7.1.4]).97

95 Franceschi, Franco. “Woollen Luxury Cloth in Late Medieval Italy.” Europe’s Rich Fabric The Consumption, Commercialisation, and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries, and Neighboring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries), Ed. Bart Lambert and Katherine Ann Wilson. New York: Routledge, 186.

96 Ibid., 186.

97 Despite his success in business, Gianni is a characterized as a simpleton. By providing money and textiles (calze, cappa, scapolare) to the friars, he receives desirable appointments in the community. The 52

However, the narrative is inherently unstable because within the novella there are multiple versions of the story. Gianni di Nello, who lived in the Porta San Piero, is credited with the second version; both locations known for wool production. The ability of the raw material to function as one of the primary determinants of the quality of cloth led to its regulation.

The promiscuity of priests drives the plot of Decameron 8.2, a novella saturated in textiles in which the Priest of Varlungo attempts to seduce Monna Belcolore, with the promise of clothing or accessories: “Allora il prete disse: ‘Io non so, chiedi pur tu: o vuogli un paio di scarpette o vuogli un frenello o vuogli una bella fetta di stame o ciò che tu vuogli’ “ (‘Tis not for me to say returned the priest; ‘but what thou wouldst have: shall it be a pair of dainty shoes? Or wouldst thou prefer a fillet? Or perchance a gay riband?

What's thy will?’ [Dec. 8.2.25]). She offers herself to him in perpetuity in exchange for money, cinque lire, that will allow her to retrieve two important clothing items from the pawnshop; the petticoat and girdle– gonnella del perso and scaggiale–she wears on saints’ days. We can be assured that the petticoat in this novella is constructed of wool because of the inclusion of the descripter perso, a product used exclusively for dyeing wool rather thank silk. 98 The priest of Decameron 8.2 claims that he has no money on his person and after much banter he instead offers her his fine blue cloak, mio tabarro di sbiavato, as collateral. The suspicious Monna Belcolore inquires of its worth and he

plot revolves around types of communication; incantations and non-verbal signals including two capons in a white napkin and the skull of an ass on a pole.

98 Brigandí, Ottavio. “Nero lucente e profondo. Un ’ipotesi sul color perso.” Bollettino Dantesco per il settimo centinario, 5: settembre 2016, 9-26. Ottavio Brigandí investigates Dante’s use of the term perso through the lens of wool production: he makes a distinction between the French perso, a deep blue dye often imported in the Duecento for dyeing wool in Italy, and the development of perso fiorentino, which most likely skewed dark red.

53

responds with a play on words: “Io voglio che tu sappi ch’egli è duagio infino in treagio, e hacci di quegli nel popolo nostro che il tengon di quattragio” (Why I’ll have you know that it’s made of pure Douai, not to say Tredouai, and there are those in the parish who would claim that it’s Quadrouai [Dec. 8.2.35]). Douai, a city in Flanders, was renowned for its textile market in the Middle Ages. Branca explains how the tern duagio refers to a high quality cloth produced in a city in Flanders (Duoai) and using an implied order of operations one can infer the even more valuable quality of the imagined treaggio and quattroagio cloths the priest is referencing as part of his scam.99 The mathematical basis of the joke relies on the stratified segmentarity of the wool market, already interrogated in Decameron 7.3. Recall, cloth from Flanders was the luxury standard for wool. In contrast, the raw wool local to Florence in twelfth and thirteenth centuries was typically of mid to poor value and sourced either locally or from Northern Africa and other territories in the Western Mediterranean.100 Gradually, however, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries certain centers, particularly Northern locations, began to produce for the export market.101 The non-luxury cloths produced in Italian cities at the time were sold under a variety of names including but not limited to stametti, trafilati, tritane, taccolini, saie, biadetti, stamforti, and mezzalana. Franceschi explains:

99 Branca notes: “Duagio era il panno fine di Douai in Fiandra, apprezzato nella Firenze del tempo: treagio e quattragio sono nomi immaginari di stoff ancor più preziose, forgiati dal sere su una falsa ma facile etimologia per meglio infinocchiare la Belcolore.”[Branca 1100(n61)].

100 Franceschi, Franco. “Woollen Luxury Cloth in Late Medieval Italy.” Europe’s Rich Fabric The Consumption, Commercialisation, and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries, and Neighboring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries), Ed. Bart Lambert and Katherine Ann Wilson. New York: Routledge, 183.

101 Franceschi notes: “most notably Milan where they produced produced pecie albe Mediolani.” Franceschi, Franco. “Woollen Luxury Cloth in Late Medieval Italy.” Europe’s Rich Fabric The Consumption, Commercialisation, and Production of Luxury Textiles in Italy, the Low Countries, and Neighboring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries), Ed. Bart Lambert and Katherine Ann Wilson. New York: Routledge, 181.

54

In 1306, the prominent Florentine company of the Alberti had several types of cloth from Brussels in stock whose prices ranged from 58 to 133 soldi per canna, cloth from Douai at 60-178 soldi per canna, from Ghent at 53-142 and from Ypres at 55-166, whereas during the same years the market value of Florentine pieces varied between 10 and 53 soldi per canna.102

We must also consider Dante’s references to Douai in Purgatorio 20.103 Hugo Capet includes Douai in a list of cities known for their textile production in what Pieter

Vanhove reads this moment in Purgatorio 20 as a “veiled yet unambiguous reference to both the thriving Flemish cloth industry and its political implications.”104 The reference to textiles becomes more explicit and personal once Hugo identifies himself as the son of a butcher:

I was the son of a Parisian butcher. When all the line of ancient kings was done and only one—a monk in gray—survived,

Figliuol fu’ io d’un beccaio di Parigi: quando li regi antichi venner meno tutti, fuor ch’un renduto in panni bigi, (Purgatorio 20.52-54)

Capet was not actually the son of a butcher. Chiavacci Leonardi locates the source of this origin story in a French legend largely diffused in Italy in the fourteenth century. She also explains that the expression in panni bigi communicates the idea of putting on the

102 Ibid., 181.

103 Ma se Doagio, Lilla, Guanto e Bruggia potesser, tosto ne saria vendetta; e io la cheggio a lui che tutto giuggia.

But if Douai and Lille and Bruges and Ghent had power, they would soon take vengeance on it; and this I beg of Him who judges all. (Purgatorio 20. 46-48)

104 Vanhove, Pieter. “Dante, the European Cloth Trade, and the Battle of the Golden Spurs.” Digital Dante, 2018, digitaldante.columbia.edu/history/vanhove-battle-goldenspurs/.

55

monastic habit while noting it was made of “un rozzo panno grigiastro, detto dal suo colore bigello.”105 Checcoli identifies the derivation of bisello or bixello as bigio or grigio. He indicates “il panno grigio, grossolano e non lavorato, diqualità modesta, ordinario, e quindi non tinto;” noting bisello appears in statues in Bologna between 1240 and 1264.106 Over time two main typologies emerged in Bologna: lana gentile comprised of fine, elegant, and superior manufacture wool and lana bisella comprised of poorer quality wool. In Europe more generally, wool was divided into three categories: panni di lana, tessuti di lana pettinata, and serge ibridi also called stoffe.107 Boccaccio’s echo of

Dante in his use of duagio adds to a layering of discourses on textile quality and the associated anxieties about authenticity present throughout the novelle focusing on wool.

After hearing the priest’s dubious duagio claims, Madonna Belcolore states her intention to visit the pawnbroker, usuraio, drawing attention to the secondhand market or economic afterlife of clothing.108 She also does not take the priest at his word but rather insists on touching the cloth. He hands it to her and she, sufficiently satisfied with her explicit tactile and implicite visual of the cloak, consents to the rendezvous.109 According to Frick, textile evaluation was a widespread skill:

Florentine men attempted to be visually frank, eschewing foppish ornament for plain, classical-looking garments of luxurious fabric, which was eloquent testimony to the fact

105 [Chiavacci Leonardi 592(n54)].

106 Checcoli, Ippolita. “La arte della lana gentile fra Duecento e Trecento: uomini e produzione.” dpm quaderni, 2008, 255.

107 Ibid., 251.

108 Consider the value, monetarily and socially, of new shirt/blouse in Decameron 8.4. For many, all clothing was second-hand.

109 Boccaccio writes, “trattosi il tabarro gliele diede” (took off his coat and gave it to her [Dec. 8.2.37]).

56

that everyone, from sottoposti (laborer) to magnate, knew cloth and could easily evaluate the worth of its wearer. 110

The discussion of the cloth’s alleged provenance, combined with her examination of the material substantiates Frick’s claims regarding the textile literacy of the population and makes good use of Monna Belcolore’s presumed expertise as a wool spinner. Albers identifies two factors in thread construction: the character of fibers or raw material and the construction itself or weave.111 The technique, Albers explains, can work with the material to elevate and enhance or depress and constrict the inherent properties of the raw material. She provides the example of wool woven in a plain weave technique losing some of its distinction. As a wool spinner Monna Belcolore should be attuned to these details and keen at assessing attributes in the material, such as softness and pliability as well as the overall gestaldt of quality. But the fabric and its owner betray her. The priest is no more trustworthy, than the fabric is made of treagio. Their conversation on the value of the cloak highlights the connection between the topos of quality and the specific cultural anxieties authenticity and deception that accompany it.

1.2.3. Silk

Let us turn our attention now to silk. While Dante refers to items known to have been constructed of silk such as the Tartar cloths, only one instance of the word seta appears in the Commedia. With the luxurious and sensual connotations attached to silk in the cultural imaginary, this sole reference to seta not surprisingly materializes in the

Heaven of Venus in Paradiso. Jane Burns has crafted a convincing argument linking

110 Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 3.

111 Albers, Anne. On Weaving. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017, 41.

57

luxury items, mostly silk attire, to women’s desire in French courtly love poetry.112 A focus on courtly love is exactly what concerns Paradiso 8. A simile embedded in Dante’s encounter with Carlo Martello contains an explicit reference to the chrysalis.

La mia letizia mi ti tien celato che mi raggia dintorno e mi nasconde quasi animal di sua seta fasciato

My gladness keepeth me concealed from thee, Which rayeth round about me, and doth hide me Like as a creature swathed in its own silk. (Paradiso. 8.52-54)

Dante deploys seta in the above tercet within a simile about concealment and disguise, one of the main literary uses of textiles and ways of thinking about metaphor.113

The use of celato is echoed in Boccaccio’s use of celando describing a function of linen in Decameron 10.6. While the allusion to a metamorphosis has been critically identified, it is important to note the material implications of this simile. Comparing the emotion of gladness cloaking the body to the way an animal wrapped in its own silk draws attention to the source of silk, the chrysalis, to the action of wrapping, and to the reflexive process of conversion itself — the final step gesturing towards Dante’s larger concerns for the salvation of human souls. Once eggs from fully developed silk moths hatch, silk worms develop for five weeks sustained on fresh mulberry leaves. When they are ready to raise their heads and spin they are moved to straw mounds. Moving their heads in figure eight motion, silk worms release liquid silk from their spinnerets. Within five days this forms

112 Burns purports that "reading through clothes in courtly literary texts will enable us to see beyond the dolled-up beauty as an object of desire and begin to envision dressed-up women as subjects who effectively deploy clothes as an important currency of courtly exchange" See Burns, E. Jane. Courtly Love Undressed. Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, 16.

113 See chapter three for a more in-depth investigation to the relationship between silk and deception in the cultural imaginary.

58

into a cocoon due to the binding properties of sericin. The cocoons might be dried in the sun for one to two days. Then, with the exception of the few allowed to grow into moths, the cocoons are submerged into boiling water killing the chrysalis, “living being inside.”114 The hot water releases the sericin. Reeling is the process of uniting filaments from multiple cocoons, typically six to thirty, to form a strong fiber.115

There is a stickiness in the physical process absent from the image Dante portrays of wrapping in his simile. But the directionality of the silk worms’ movements–a figure eight motion–and the visual properties of the cocoon, mirror the cyclical action of wrapping. In order to wrap, a fabric must be somewhat light and pliable. There is a naturalness and inherent instability in the idea of cloaking the body. The silk that wraps the silk worm gets unwrapped in the reeling process to make the silk then capable of wrapping or cloaking us. The harshness of plunging one’s hands into boiling water counterbalances the delicacy with which the cocoons need to be handled both right before and during the reeling process as the product is pushed and coaxed into a usable shape and form. Conversion by heat recalls the refining qualities of Purgatorial fire. The transitory nature of each step is in sync with the ephemeral state of of everything outside of Paradiso and perhaps even some conditions within Paradiso, regarding the restitution of bodies.

Boccaccio uses the term di seta four times in the Decameron, particularly concentrated in tales featuring donne mobili in the Mediterranean. The adventures of

Zinevra, Gostanza, and Iancofiore create a portrait vested in the depiction of feminine

114 Houghteling, Sylvia. “Silk” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 225-229.

115 Ibid., 225-229.

59

coded handiwork, Eastern connotations of silk, and the instability and sometimes restitution of gendered roles. The story of Alatiel Decameron 2.7 provides a helpful contrast to those studied here as it notably lacks any engagement with handiwork by its protagonist. Not coincidentally, Alatiel’s journey is frequently characterized by her passivity.116

Like Decameron 2.7, Decameron 2.9 features a donna mobile stranded, surviving in a global, cross-cultural, Mediterranean world under threat from men at every turn. Yet, as critics almost universally point out, Zinevra is in many ways Alatiel’s opposite. Where

Alatiel is buffeted by the winds as a passive traveler, Zinevra radiates agency. She actively forges her own path. Where Alatiel is silent, Zinevra communicates. Like

Gostanza, and perhaps even more so, we can locate the site of her agency within a craft tradition; most important for her survival is her tactile dexterity for textile application: “sí come di lavorare lavorii di seta e simili cose, che ella non facesse meglio che alcuna altra” (dexterous and handy with her hands - there was no type of woman’s work, such as working in silk and the like, that she could not do better than anyone else [Dec. 2.9.8]).

Relatedly, yet firmly classified under the masculine, Zinevra possesses accounting skills:

“Appresso questo la commendò meglio saper cavalcare un cavallo, tenere uno uccello, leggere e scrivere e fare una ragione che se un mercatante fosse” (To which encomium he added that she knew how to manage a horse, fly a hawk, read, write and cast up accounts better than as if she were a merchant [Dec. 2.9.10]). The reference to merchants account books is specifically local. Tognetti locates the birth of the modern day accounting ledger

116 Though some scholars have sought to reinterpret that dominant reading.

60

book in Florence as directly connected to the needs of textile merchants.117 The account book as object is a direct signal back to the business arm of the massive textile industrial complex.

While Bernabò believes his wife is exceptional in every way, Ambruogiuolo insists no woman can resist temptation. They make a bet of five thousand gold florins that

Ambruogiuolo cannot produce evidence that Zinevra would be unfaithful to him.

But of course he does produce evidence, false planted evidence, in order to unfairly win the bet. Ambruogioulo goes to Genoa, bribes his way into her home and conceals himself in chest to be hidden in her bedroom. He steals a variety of personal clothing and accessories including a purse, long cloak, rings and belts and then presents these objects as falsified evidence of his conquest to Bernabò. Bamboozled, Bernabò instructs a servant to murder his wife. The servant pulls a dagger on Zinevra while she is riding her horse: he announces his homicidal intentions. With a succinct, three-pronged argument she evades his trap. First, she appeals to his sense of self-identity suggesting he does not want to be a murderer. Next, she insists on her innocence. Lastly, and most compellingly, she orders the servant to return her clothes to her husband as falsified evidence of the mission’s success. She uses the language and the logic of the men who are out to destroy her to plot her escape. She also demands the servant give her his doublet and cloak in exchange: “che tu prenda questi miei panni e donimi solamente il tuo farsetto e un cappuccino” (take then these clothes of mine and give me in exchange just thy doublet

117 In terms of employment and overall finances, the two main industries in Florence were mercantura and textiles. Tognetti credits the uniquely mercantile character of Florence in a transformation that lead to the growth of many transition skills such as writing and mathematics. See Tognetti, Sergio. “Florentine Economy between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence Wool, Silk, Painting. Ed Cecilie Hollberg. Florence: Giunti Editore S.p.A., 2017, 30-42.

61

and a hood [Dec.2.9.40 ]). With the servant’s tattered doublet, cloak, and money, she immediately escapes to a nearby town where she finds the necessary textile tools: da una vecchia procacciato quello che le bisognava, racconciò il farsetto a suo dosso, e fattol corto e fattosi della sua camiscia un paio di pannilini e i capelli tondutisi e trasformatasi tutta in forma d'un marinaro. she managed to obtain what she needed from an old woman; she altered the doublet to her size by shortening it and made her shift into a pair of trousers, cut her hair in such a way that she looked just like a sailor and then she headed for the sea.118

The doublet was an essential piece of the fourteenth century male wardrobe: the shift was an interior layer of women’s wear. While critics generally focus on the moment of Zinevra’s disguise as a man as an opportunity to explore the concept of shifting identities, I want to draw our attention to how in order to cross-dress she essentially becomes her own tailor. The tools are not articulated but a reasonable assumption would include, at minimum, scissors, a needle, and thread. Such tools and the subsequent act of altering the clothes to fit her female body conjure both the feminine and domestically coded practice of mending clothes and the more masculinely aligned labor of the tailor.

This act signals the real key to Zinevra’s agency: on micro-level her artisanal craft skills and on a macro-level her ability to seek and acquire knowledge and put it into practice.

Even within the highly regulated and hierarchical structure of the textile industry within the category of tailor there were distinctions between doublet makers, embroiderers, and master tailors.119 According to Frick, while there are few business documents regarding female tailors, “we do know there were women tailoring garments, because guild statutes

118 Decameron 2.9.42.

119 On faresttai, Frick writes: “doublet makers, who were specialized tailors of this predominantly male garment, which was quilted and waxed to give the upper body shape. A farsettaio somethimes went by the title of sarto/farsettaio.” Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 229.

62

occasionally refer to regulations for both male and female tailors.”120 However, the

Estimi reveals the limited scope of their official participation showing a decrease in female tailors from thirteen to one in 1352 and then increasing to two in 1404.121 Frick reports that even when there were occasional female tailors who perhaps inherited a family business “male cutters gained precedence over female cutters.”122 The figure of the tailor in historical reality skews masculine. The masculine valence attached to and craft knowledge embedded in the tailor both become essential to Zinevra’s survival wherein a series of trasgressive acts she transfers from the feminine to the masculine and from West to East. In her specific engagement with textiles, she moves from the feminine sphere of handiwork to the masculine sphere of mercantile practice. Altering these clothes occurs during a brief non-binary state requiring the aggregate skill set of both genders.

Zinevra boards a vessel, renames herself Sicurano da Finale, and eventually arrives in Alexandria as servant to the Sultan. At the trade fair in Acre with a gathering of

Italian merchants, Sicurano is charged with representing the Sultan because (s)he had already demonstrated linguistic fluency. Discovering her stolen items at Ambruogiuolo’s stall, he – thinking she is a Saracen male soldier–unknowingly describes to her what he considers the amusing story of how he acquired these goods. Sicurano/Zinevra plots an elaborate plan to bring Ambruogiuolo to justice and restore her former identity.

Boccaccio writes:

120 Ibid., 14.

121 Frick shows from Alessandro Stella’s Figures from the Estimi (tax declarations). See Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 19.

122 Ibid., 14. 63

Mostrò adunque Sicurano d'aver molto cara questa novella, e artatamente prese con costui una stretta dimestichezza, tanto che per gli suoi conforti Ambruogiuolo, finita la fiera, con essolui e con ogni sua cosa se n'andò in Alessandria, dove Sicurano gli fece fare un fondaco e misegli in mano de' suoi denari assai: per che egli, util grande veggendosi, vi dimorava volentieri he therefore feigned to be much interested by this story, consorted frequently and very familiarly with Ambrogiuolo, and insidiously captured his confidence, insomuch that at her suggestion, when the fair was done, he, taking with him all his wares, accompanied her to Alexandria, where she provided him with a shop, and put no little of her own money in his hands; so that he, finding it very profitable, was glad enough to stay.123

Here Boccaccio offers in essence the working model of the lanaiolo, wool merchant, in Florence who outsources all various phases of processing while maintaining control over the specifications and profits. In her masculine disguise Zinevra is able to effectively exploit her accounting and mercantile skills to set this trap. She gathers

Bernabò, Sicurano, and the Sultan all in the same room to recount the tale. Then she dramatically “abandons her masculine voice and masculine guise,” confesses her identity and rips open her clothes baring her breasts and using her body as evidence. In a gender reversal for a text with numerous mute women, Ambruogioulo goes mute with shame.

Zinevra’s return to her former identity has been interpreted in many ways.

Weaver views changes in clothing as markers of change in social positions for female characters.124 She reads Zinevra’s cross-dressing as a guarantee of protections and social mobility. Following that thread, Cavallero views the masculine guise as a symbol of equality that elevates woman to the level of man and therefore reads a loss of status in

Zinevra’s return to feminine clothing. Zinevra’s yield to domesticity could be perceived

123 Decameron 2.9.56.

124 For more on the semiotics of clothing in the Decameron see Weaver, Elissa. “Dietro il vestito: La semiotica del vestire nel Decameron.” La novella italiana. Atti del convegno di Caprarola, 19– 24 settembre 1988. Roma: Salerno. 701–710. and Weaver, Elissa. “Fashion and Fortune in the Decameron” Boccaccio 1313– 2013. Ed F. Ciabattoni, E. Filosa and K.Olson, Ravenna: Longo. 71– 87. 64

as a return to passivity. But a focus on production rather than consumption, reveals that

Zinevra does not just cross dress, she cross makes. With this perspective her return in the conclusion is not passive à la Cavallero but a continuation of her navigating a system she has always been fluent in. Zinevra resides in a hybrid space between male and female, tailor and handiworker, merchant and wife. Prior to the adventure, she possessed the masculine and feminine skills but in the act of tailoring she is able to unite them and by setting up a shop she exploits their combined nature, allowing her to navigate a complex world where options are highly restricted via categories, particularly gender.

Gostanza of Decameron 5.2, like Alatiel before her, is shipwrecked in the

Mediterranean but unlike Alatiel she exerts more control over her destiny. It may be helpful to think of Gostanza as a midpoint on a continuum of agency from Alatiel to

Zinevra. Unlike the women famously written about in the proemio locked up in their rooms. Gostanza’s adventures unfold in Sicily and Tunisia. What is unstated is the historical context of these two locations in this textile rich tale. The Umayyad conquest of

Hispania in the eighth century brought silk weaving to Iberia.125 Similarly, a Tunisian presence in Sicily correlates with the development of the local silk weaving practice there. While the quality remained middle to low, production small, and distribution local, silk expertise continued to develop in Sicily under Arab rule as well as after the Norman conquest, circa 1061-1071.

The action of Decameron 5.2 begins in Lipari, a small island off the coast of

Sicily. It is important to note that Sicily was a leading weaving center until the death of

125 The Umayyads, established in 661 in Damascus, were the first Muslim dynasty.

65

Manfred.126 Afterwards many Arab and Byzantine weavers fled to Lucca and Venice, which became much larger and more prestigious weaving centers by the fourteenth century. Gostanza romantically rejects Martuccio: he turns to piracy but is quickly sacked and taken prisoner in Tunisia. Believing he is dead, Gostanza, sets off on a boat to commit suicide. Yet she survives and like Zinevra, undergoes a transformation from West to East, quickly broadcasting her identity through her clothes. A local woman, Carapresa, discovers Gostanza and identifies her as a Christian by her clothing. Boccaccio writes:

"all'abito conosciutala che cristiana era” (and perceiving by her dress that she was a

Christian [Dec.5.2.16]). Carapresa wraps her in a mantello to take her to an old woman in

Susa: “e tutta nel suo mantello stesso chiusala in Susa con seco la menò“ (and on her return she wrapped her in her own mantle, and led her to Susa [Dec.5.2.23]). Like

Zinevra, a temporary re-dressing is the first step in Gostanza’s transformation. Unlike

Zinevra, Gostanzas transformation is trans-cultural, not trans-gendered, and inititiated by another not herself. Clothing functions as cultural coding: after the shipwreck Gostanza is recognized first by dress, then by speech. Boccaccio reaffirms a direct connection between textiles, language, and gender by describing how she learns the trade of the

Tunisians by living only with women:

La donna, la qual vecchia era oramai, udita costei, guardò la giovane nel viso e cominciò a lagrimare, e presala le basciò la fronte, e poi per la mano nella sua casa ne la menò, nella quale ella con alquante altre femine dimorava senza alcuno uomo,e tutte di diverse cose lavoravano di lor mano, di seta, di palma, di cuoio diversi lavarii faccendo.

The old lady listened, and then, gazing steadfastly in the damsel's face, shed tears, and

126 According to Fanelli: “Palermo was the capital of the Arab Emirate in Sicily; the textile laboratory of the royal palace – Tiraz-produced the highest quality silk and gold textiles, according to the most progressive weaving techniques introduced from the Arab world.” Fanelli. Rosalia Bonito. Five centuries of italian textiles: 1300-1800 A selection from the Museo del Tessuto Prato. Prato: Cassa Di Risparmi e Depositi Di Prato, 1981, 21.

66

taking her hand, kissed her forehead, and led her into the house, where she and some other women dwelt quite by themselves, doing divers kinds of handiwork in silk and palm leaves and leather.127

The raw materials the women work with are local to Susa and the work they are engaged in is coded as feminine. In fact Boccaccio practically stages an all-female workshop in this scene: “senza alcuno uomo.” He also ascribes a pedagogical component to the relationship between the older woman and Gostanza as the former provides comfort and mentorship. The raw materials Gostanza engages with — silk, palm, and leather — have textile and manuscript applications. In fact many textile materials can and have been used as writing material, including silk, linen, and cotton.

Linen was used in Egypt and in Rome. The palm leaf in particular impacted the layout of manuscripts in India and South-east Asia. Papyrus as a writing material exhibits similarities to woven cloth in its dual side presentation. Bischoff explains: “the side with the horizontal rib was chosen to receive the script because it was easier to write on; it is called the ‘recto’ side, and forms the inner side of the roll.”128 Weaving presents a similar dual sidedness. Additionally, leather was used for manuscripts in Egypt, and Western and

Central Asia and in the Jewish tradition.129 Boccaccio enumerates a list of materials with multiple potentialities for textiles and writing, anticipating Gostanza’s imminent language acquisition:

127 Decameron 5.2.25.

128 Bischoff, Bernhard. Latin Paleography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Translated by Daibi O Croinin and David Ganz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 7.

129 Hourihane notes: “The palm leaf which has a long tradition of use for manuscripts, had a lasting and decisive influence not only on the shape of the manuscript but also on the development of a large number of scripts in India and South-east Asia. After the introduction of paper to India by the Muslims in the 13th century, certain types of manuscripts and even the blank space in the text, originally left by the scribe to provide room for the cord; this became a focal point for decoration.” See Hourihane, Colum P. Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 191.

67

De' quali la giovane in pochi dí apparò a fare alcuno con loro insieme incominciò a lavorare, e in tanta grazia e buono amore venne della buona donna e dell'altre, che fu maravigliosa cosa; e in poco spazio di tempo, mostrandogliele esse, il lor linguaggio apparò.

Wherein the damsel in a few days acquired some skill, and thenceforth wrought together with them; and rose wondrous high in the favour and good graces of all the ladies, who soon taught her their language.130

This linguistic mastery occurs within two sentences, making her acquisition of knowledge appear almost instant. Gostanza attains the cultural fluency essential for her communication, and thus survival, via active and embodied engagement with materials.

The unimpeded communication with the king leads to a reunion with her beloved

Martuccio. Because creating within the textile arts is a practice that involves the circulation of knowledge, it functions well here as an index to agency. Boccaccio gestures towards, to borrow terminology from Smith, a craft epistemology. And one that is decidedly absent from Alatiel’s experience. Despite this gesture, Gostanza’s craft engagement resides within the world of women’s handiwork as expression of virtue. Bray makes parallels between the textile industry in early modern Europe and China, noting the marginalization of women’s economic contribution in both proto-industrial societies.

In her examination she makes a distinction between womanly work and women’s work, distinguishing between a character that is performing a cultural practice and expressing feminine virtue, and a character whose work represents artisanal production.

In Decameron 5.2, the representation of the work itself is less indicative of commercial production and more likely a representation of the type of work Bray calls womanly work, signaling female virtue. The absence of men creates an environment void of threats to Gostanza’s virtue and the emphasis on handiwork fits into longstanding

130 Decameron 2.5.26 68

cultural notions on femininity. With Gostanza, Boccaccio designs a path from textile construction to language production, demonstrating her ability to successfully navigate economic and cultural systems all the while artfully reminding the reader of an implicit connection between text and textile. Gostanza works with her hands, di lor mano, the most important and universal tool in craft production and in direct engagement with the raw materials. Through this unmediated contact with raw material and under the instruction of the staged female-only Eastern guild, Gostanza both performs feminine virtue and acquires language leading to her survival.

In Decameron 8.10, the story of Salabaetto and Madame Iancofiore, silk along with wool and hemp, anchor the plot in the high stakes world of the contemporary

Mediterranean textile trade with all its associated risks and rewards. The Sicilian prostitute, Madame Iancofiore, deceives and robs the Florentine cloth merchant,

Salabaetto, only to later be deceived and robbed by him to an even greater degree. The story manipulates the metaphors of economics and the language of profits, interest, and losses to explore deception and trickery in a sexual relationship. Associations rampant in the cultural imaginary emerge in this tale. Silk appears in the intimate possessions of the seductive, luxurious, sexual, deceptive, female, Sicilian prostitute while wool aligns with the honest, hard working, fair-skinned, blonde, mercantile, business-minded, Florentine, male merchant. The strong focus on geographic identity extends to the material associations. Iancofiore refers to Salabaetto as toscano acanino, which both reinforces his

Tuscan identity and reveals, as Branca illuminates, her Sicilian roots and their associations with the East.131

131 Branca glosses acanino as an old Sicilian word possibly derived from Arabic and functioning as a term of endearment like dear or sweet: “parola del siciliano antico che deriva forse dall’arabo hanin, che vale 69

Silk lines the sheets that Iancofiore uses to seduce Salabaetto at the bathhouse: “vi miser sú un paio di lenzuola sottilissime listate di seta e poi una coltre di bucherame cipriana bianchissima con due origlieri lavorati a maraviglie” (they covered it with a pair of sheets of the finest fabric, bordered with silk, and a quilt of the whitest Cyprus buckram, with two daintily-embroidered pillows [Dec.8.10.14]). All of her seductive possessions point to the East: from her perfumed oils and embroidered pillows to the scent of her bedroom, Oriental wood and Cyprian incense.132 Further, the prostitutes in

Palermo are described as physically beautiful but enemies of feminine virtue: “femine del corpo bellissime ma nemiche dell’onestà” (women, fair as fair can be, but foes to virtue

[Dec. 8.10.7]). This outer-inner dichotomy models the fraud that will be enacted with textiles in the final trick at the conclusion of this tale. When Madame Iancofiore opens the customs house, instead of thousands of florins worth of olive oil and fine wool cloth, she discovers vats of seawater and broken hemp fibers, essentially water and low grade, damaged, raw materials. Branca describes capecchio as: “la parte più grossolana risultante dalla prima pettinatura della canapa e del lino” (the more coarse part from the first combing of hemp and linen/flax [Branca 1129(n1)]).133 Both the intrinsic physical properties of the materials and the culturally coded values and messages embedded in

caro, amato , dolce.” [Branca 1131(n33)].

132 The women of Cyprus at this time are known for their embroidery techniques. See Levi Pisetzky, Rosita. Storia del Costume. (Milano:Istituto editoriale italiano, 1964) 2:201–09.

133 English translation here is mine. Linen is derived from hemp and flax. Attributes hemp is known for include durability, ability to maintain shape, absorbency, breathability, quick-dry, high absorption potential for perspiration. Hemp accepts color and retains dyes better than cotton, is highly resistant to rotting thus its popularity in marine applications and requires less water than cotton in terms of its processing. See “Characteristics of Hemp.” Oecotextiles. 02 June 2010. oecotextiles.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/characteristics-of-hemp, Accessed 10 January 2018.

70

them become driving forces in the novella. The materials mimic the characters and drive the plot.

In conclusion, for Zinevra craft knowledge in silk work is directly correlated with her mobility and associated with language acquisition. For Gostanza, the silk reference brings attention to her hands as tools, her ability to manipulate materials, and an even more direct relationship with language production and text. In Decameron 8.10,

Boccaccio exploits the heavily embedded cultural valences assigned to silk remind us about the dangers of the Other and to promote and reaffirm wool as local, moral,

Florentine, and Italian. Many of these codes and assumptions are subverted, expanded, and explored in each author’s exploration of tools, techniques, and work roles.

71

Chapter 2: Craftsmanship

Lo moto e la virtù d’i santi giri, come dal fabbro l’arte del martello, da’ beati motor convien che spiri;

The force and motion of the holy spheres must be inspired by the blessed movers, just as the smith imparts the hammer’s art; Paradiso 2.127-129

In the above simile, Dante stages the relationship between artisan and tool to explain the primal and mechanical workings of the universe. Just as the skill of the hammer is imparted and unleashed by the smith, the motion of heavenly bodies is activated by the divine energy of the beati motor[i]. This chapter will examine craft technique as a site of collaboration between the artisan, material, and tool. Much as the discussion of raw materials in chapter one led us to a pre-material state, an examination of tools inescapably directs us to a consideration of the human hand as the ultimate tool.

Smith argues, “that for artisans, experience and the production of things were bound up with their own bodies.”134 Raymond Tallis refers to the hand as the master tool of human life, suggesting there would be no human history and no cultural development separate from evolutionary biology without the hand.135 With its special relationship to the brain,

Tallis argues the hand is a site of manipulation, knowledge, and communication as well as a link between prehension and apprehension.136 Nina Zschocke explains:

134 Smith, Pamela H. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 6.

135 Tallis, Raymond. A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003, 21.

136 For our purposes I am using prehension to refer to physically grasping (involving perception but not necessarily cognition) and apprehension to refer to the site of grasping (with a cognitive conceptual component). See Tallis’exploration of these terms in Tallis, Raymond. Michaelangelo’s Finger: An 72

Tactility, conceptualized as unmediated touch, lies at the center of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s theory of presence. . . Perceived presence is, for Gumbrecht (2004, 10-18), a pre-hermeneutical, non-cognitive relation to the world.137

Dante activates this concept of tactility on the terrace of pride in Purgatorio when transitioning between terraces and feeling much lighter in body than during his previous journey through Inferno. In his explanation, Virgilio reveals what is yet still unknown to

Dante-pilgrim; the letter ‘P’ is engraved upon his brow and as he completes each terrace a letter P will be removed:

Allor fec’ io come color che vanno con cosa in capo non da lor saputa, se non che ’ cenni altrui sospecciar fanno; per che la mano ad accertar s’aiuta, e cerca e truova e quello officio adempie che non si può fornir per la veduta

Then I behaved like those who make their way with something on their head of which they’re not aware, till others’ signs make them suspicious, at which, the hand helps them to ascertain; it seeks and finds and touches and provides the services that sight cannot supply (Purgatorio 12.127-131)

In this scene, Dante-poet triangulates the unaware subject (Dante-pilgrim), the observers who signal the information presumably with their own hands, and his own hand to illustrate what Tallis argues about the haptic component of touch. Touch, more than pressure and physical contact, implies awareness. Non-conscious objects are unaware of

Exploration of Everyday Transcendence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

137 Zschocke, Nina. “Tactility.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 247.

73

one another and therefore do not experience touch.138 The awareness inherent in touch is what allows Dante to detect and understand that the letter ‘P’ is located on his forehead.

Moreover, touch could not be more essential to Dante’s truth claims about his journey and his insistence on the embodied nature of that experience. The language of corporeality saturates the early canti of Inferno and continues throughout all three cantiche. Two moments in particular occur consecutively in Inferno 12. First, the stones move beneath Dante’s feet:

Così prendemmo via giù per lo scarco di quelle pietre, che spesso moviensi sotto i miei piedi per lo novo carco

And so we made our way across that heap of stones, which often moved beneath my feet because my weight was somewhat strange for them. (Inferno 12.28-30)

Dante’s physical weight displaces and moves the stones under his feet. He is aware of their movement and reports it back to the reader. This internal communication loop anticipates the second instance in which the communication involves a third party within the text. A surprised shade asks the others if they noticed Dante’s physical impact on the environment, specifically that what he touches moves: “Siete voi accorti / che quel di retro move ciò ch’el tocca?” (Have you noticed / how he who walks behind moves what he touches? [Inf. 12.81]). The sensory cues about Dante-poet’s corporeality imbue a visceral dimension to the reading experience and show the physical contact between body and material to be a site of apprehension.139 Tools sometimes simply and

138 Tallis, Raymond. The Hand: A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003, 12.

139 In the prior canto, Virgil and Dante are required to pause for sensory acclimation, specifically related to 74

sometimes not so simply mediate between the hand and the environment.140 Hands are the primary site of contact between artisan and tool, as well as subject and textile whether that subject is the maker, the wearer or the manipulator of the aforementioned textile. Persistently, in Dante-pilgrim’s journey, one character touches his own clothing or another’s in an attempt to garner further information.

On the same terrace where Dante searches for the letter P on his forehead, he encounters thirteen examples of punished pride including a carving of Arachne and the remnants of her weavings. The carved representation of Arachne’s weavings and other examples of ekphrasis complicate some of the implicit cultural hierarchies of art production. On the topic of marginalization, Anna Lehninger notes:

The historical exclusion of textiles from the realm of professional art might not only be related to their social and sexual encoding, but also to their inherent nature as soft and ephemeral materials that confound the official canons of art while revealing historical and current attributions of meaning.141

By presenting Arachne’s weavings in the form of carving, Dante is upending the hard/soft dichotomy between these two media and offering a perceived permanence to

smell, before continuing their descent:

Lo nostro scender conviene esser tardo, sì che s’ausi un poco in prima il senso al tristo fiato; e poi no i fia riguardo.

It would be better to delay descent so that our senses may grow somewhat used to this foul stench; and then we can ignore it. (Inferno 11.10-12)

140 Tallis, Raymond. The Hand: A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003, 23.

141 Lehninger, Anna. “Marginalization.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten : Edition Imorde, 2017, 167.

75

textile arts in his representation of them. Lehninger points to hierarchy within the category of textiles:

Silke Tammen (2006, 225) points to the physical hierarchy of textile techniques themselves, from weaving and embroidery down to knitting and crocheting, by comparing them in terms of their mythological, historical, and gender-specific encoding. Dietmar Rübel (2012, 57) has highlighted the hitherto unexploited potential of soft materials to create meaning thanks to their changeable and malleable quality.142

In this chapter, I attempt to parse the historical, social, and material encoding in Dante and Boccaccio’s depiction of textile techniques while cognizant of the malleable quality of materials that Rübel emphasizes.

Many of the examples prompt Dante to express his concerns about art’s mimetic capabilities. But the mimetic aspects of making are coded both positively, as in nature imitating God, and negatively, as in Dante’s diatribes about counterfeiting. Ingold insists that when similar objects are made generation after generation it is not the case that a template is transmitted from ancestor to descendant of a design that has already been copied but rather involves the coordination of perception and action learned through copying the movement of experienced practitioners in a socially scaffolded context.143 It is in this way that Ingold classifies making as copying.

2.1 The Generic Artisan

In addition to the portrayal of specific artisan figures such as the butcher, painter, and blacksmith, Dante explores the general category of craftsperson exploiting its protean

142 Lehninger, Anna. “Marginalization.” Textile Terms:A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten : Edition Imorde, 2017, 167.

143 Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000, 372.

76

properties.144 Throughout the Commedia Dante uses terms like maestro, arte, fattore, and fabbro to depict makers but also to situate God as the ultimate craftsperson.

After referring to a mythological blacksmith from whom Jove took a sharp thunderbolt in

Inferno 14, fabbro reappears embedded in a discussion of bad fortune or habit in

Purgatorio 14.145 In Purgatorio 26, Dante explicitly uses fabbro to reveal the meta- textual connections inherent in the language of production. After privileging the physical materials of writing, ink and paper, he situates poet Arnaut Daniel as a blacksmith of poetry, describing him as an artisan of the mother tongue: 146

«O frate», disse, «questi ch’io ti cerno col dito», e additò un spirto innanzi, «fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno.

"he there, whom I point out to you”—he showed

144 Long defines craftsperson as a man or woman who worked with their hands in craft production. See Long, Pamela. Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400-1600. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2011, 4.

145 Se Giove stanchi ’l suo fabbro da cui crucciato prese la folgore aguta

Though Jove wear out the smith from whom he took, in wrath, the keen—edged thunderbolt with which (Inferno 14.52-53)

146 ditemi, acciò ch’ancor carte ne verghi, chi siete voi, e chi è quella turba che se ne va di retro a’ vostri terghi» please tell me, so that I may yet transcribe it upon my pages, who you are, and what crowd moves in the direction opposite. (Purgatorio 26.64-66)

E io a lui: «Li dolci detti vostri, che, quanto durerà l’uso moderno, faranno cari ancora i loro incostri

And I to him: “It’s your sweet lines that, for as long as modern usage lasts, will still make dear their very inks.” (Purgatorio 26.112-114)

77

us one who walked ahead—”he was a better artisan of the mother tongue, surpassing (Purgatorio 26.115-117)

Chiavacci Leonardi reports the many times Arnaut uses the metaphor of the workshop to speaks of his work as a poet and one particular instance Dante uses the same metaphor in an argument about the vernacular in the Convivio.147 Dante isolates skill from material using the example of a bad smith who blames his poor craftsmanship on the quality of the iron supplied to him. In this analogy, the material is the vernacular.

Dante, of course, writes the Commedia in the vernacular and self-consciously meditates on and refers to the craft of writing throughout his text. The intermingling of the language of textile and textual production continues with the refining fire found at the conclusion of this canto.

Further into Dante’s journey, in the Heaven of Mars, the discourse returns to corrupt Florence:

La tua città, che di colui è pianta che pria volse le spalle al suo fattore e di cui è la ’nvidia tanto pianta,

produce e spande il maladetto fiore c’ha disvïate le pecore e li agni, però che fatto ha lupo del pastore.

Your city, which was planted by that one

147 Chiavacci Leonardi draws our attention to Convivio 1.xi.1 (Decameron, 782 [n117]): “La seconda setta contra nostro volgare si fa per una maliziata scusa. Molti sono che amano più d’essere tenuti maestri che d’essere, e per fuggir lo contrario, cioè di non esser tenuti, sempre danno colpa a la materia de l’arte apparecchiata, o vero a lo strumento; sì come lo mal fabbro biasima lo ferro appresentato a lui, e lo malo citarista biasima la cetera, credendo dare la colpa del mal coltello e del mal sonare al ferro e alla cetera, e levarla a sé.” (The second group against our vernacular arises out of disingenuous excusing. There are many who love to be considered masters rather than to be such, and to avoid the opposite, that is, not being so considered, they always lay the blame on the material furnished for their craft, or on their tools. For example, a bad smith blames the iron supplied to him, and the bad lute player blames the lute, thinking to throw the fault of the bad knife or the bad music on the iron or the lute, and to remove it from himself. Alighieri, Dante. Convivio. Translated by Richard Lansing. In Digital Dante. digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/library/convivio-italian/. Accessed August 5, 2019.

78

who was the first to turn against his Maker, the one whose envy cost us many tears

produces and distributes the damned flower that turns both sheep and lambs from the true course, for of the shepherd it has made a wolf. (Paradiso 9.127-135)

Scholars agree that the city is Florence and the maladetto fiore, the florin. The depiction of God as maker and the use of the verb fare (fatto) paired with both pecore and agni hint at a discourse on textiles. Dante also uses sheep to communicate patterns of movement.

In Purgatorio 3, Dante compares the way the souls move to the way that sheep move:

“Come le pecorelle escon del chiuso / a una, a due, a tre, e l’atre stanno” (Even as sheep that move, first one, then two, / then three, out of the fold-the others also [Purg. 3.79-

80]). Together these terms gesture towards the wool industry, buttress Dante’s depiction of God as the ultimate fabbro or craftsperson, and parallel the embodied movements present in textile-rich scenes.

Dante’s use of the term arte spans the economic spectrum and aids in an exploration of the figure of the craftsperson. In Inferno 9, Dante-pilgrim passes among the tombs of the arch-heretics observing that the flames are hotter than any artisan could have made:

ché tra li avelli fiamme erano sparte, per le quali eran sì del tutto accesi, che ferro più non chiede verun’ arte.

for flames were scattered through the tombs, and these had kindled all of them to glowing heat; no artisan could ask for hotter iron. (Inferno 9.118-120)

In this scene of death, Dante-author situates an act of creation referring to the artisan’s skill for comparative purposes to emphasize the severity of a heat created by God. Canto

79

15 of Inferno begins with rich textile-adjacent content, including references to margins and Bruge followed by this instance of maestro in a description of the landscape of Hell:

a tale imagine eran fatti quelli, tutto che né sì alti né sì grossi, qual che si fosse, lo maestro félli.

just so were these embankments, even though they were not built so high and not so broad, whoever was the artisan who made them. (Inferno 15.10-12)

The anonymity of the craftsperson is privileged in this passage, particularly in contrast to the named artists, writers, and famous figures found elsewhere in the text. In both passages (from Inferno 9 and 15), the artisan is a comparative figure and the focus is on the ability to make. In a passage in the Heaven of the Sun, with its underlying chiastic structure that is perhaps itself a linguistic corollary to weaving, Dante pairs arte with maestro, shifting the emphasis from the maker to the art.148 Even earlier, in Paradiso 2,

Dante undertakes an extended meta-literary meditation on the idea of a craftsperson and craft practice. He explicitly articulates the concept of a book with terms like volume and carte while using the language of experimentation and artisanal practice with words such as lo grasso and ’l magro:149

esto pianeto, o, sì come comparte lo grasso e ’l magro un corpo, così questo

148 “e lì comincia a vagheggiar ne l’arte” di quel maestro che dentro a sé l’ama, tanto che mai da lei l’occhio non parte. and there begin to look with longing at that Master’s art, which in Himself he loves so much that his eye never parts from it. (Paradiso 10.10-12)

149 For more on the craft meaning of fat and lean, see Smith, Pamela. The Matter of Art: Materials, Technologies, Meanings 1200-1700. Ed. C. Anderson, A. Dunlop, P. H. Smith. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015, 1-17.

80

nel suo volume cangerebbe carte"

and through, or else as, in a body, lean and fat can alternate, so would this planet alternate the pages in its volume. (Paradiso 2.76-78)

The material signifiers embedded in Beatrice’s speech both reflect Dante’s

(mis)understanding of the cause of the moon spots as material and are the mechanism by which he is able to communicate the true answer.150 The idea of a planet, the Heaven of the Moon, as a book is quickly followed by an unambiguous staging of the process of experimentation, a concept central to craft practice.

questa instanza può deliberarti esperïenza, se già mai la provi, ch’esser suol fonte ai rivi di vostr’ arti.

Yet an experiment, were you to try it, could free you from your cavil—and the source of your arts’ course springs from experiment. (Paradiso 2.94-96)

The canto then culminates with Dante elucidating how the entire universe works using the comparison to the smith found in this chapter’s opening epigraph.151

In Paradiso 16, the figure of the artisan appears in Dante’s nostalgic and wistful recollection of a mythical Florentine past:

Ma la cittadinanza, ch’è or mista

150 See Barolini, Teodolinda. “Paradiso 2: The Marks of Cain.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2014. digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine- comedy/paradiso/paradiso-2/

151 Lo moto e la virtù d’i santi giri, come dal fabbro l’arte del martello, da’ beati motor convien che spiri;

The force and motion of the holy spheres must be inspired by the blessed movers, just as the smith imparts the hammer’s art; (Paradiso 2.127-129)

81

di Campi, di Certaldo e di Fegghine, pura vediesi ne l’ultimo artista.

But then the citizens, now mixed with Campi, with the Certaldo, and with the Figline, were pure down to the humblest artisan. (Paradiso 16.49-51)

There are two important details to note; first the very inclusion of the artisan in an idealized portrait of early Florence and second the hierarchical ranking of the artisan at the lowest end of the socioeconomic scale. Artisans were in many ways the economic engine of Florence. Most commentators have focused on the descriptive adjective preceding artista. Mandelbaum translates l’ultimo as humblest and Longfellow as lowest.152 Both arrive at an interpretation of this passage in line with early commentaries by Buti, Imola, Serravalle and others who believe Dante is expressing the idea that in the distant past Florentines from the highest social echelon all the way down to the lowest worker as represented by the ultimo artista were pure and unmixed.153 The anonymity of the artisan, first presented in Inferno 15, is privileged again in this depiction by its placement directly next to the named named families.

As shown above, Dante uses the figure of the artisan paradoxically to point to both the lowest, humblest members of society and to God as the maker of the universe.

The artisan creates objects, imitates nature, and produces literature and culture. In his

152 Alighieri, Dante. “Paradiso 16.” Digital Dante. Translated by Longfellow. (New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2014). digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/paradiso/paradiso-16 and Alighieri, Dante. “Paradiso 16.” Digital Dante. Translated by Mandelbaum. (New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2014). digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/paradiso/paradiso-16

153 Cited from the commentary to Paradiso 16.49-51-103 by Francesco da Buti (Pisa: Fratelli Nistri, 1862), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU. Cited from the commentary to Paradiso 16.49-51-103 by Benvenuto da Imola (Florentiae: G. Barbèra, 1887), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU. Cited from the commentary to Paradiso 16.49-51-103 by Johannis de Serravalle (Prati: Giachetti, 1891), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

82

representation of this figure, Dante demonstrates that the necessary experimentation process for gaining various types of knowledge practiced and circulated by craftspersons is a similar process to the practice of writing, signaled materially by the insertion of book making references and substantively in his treatment of Arnaut Daniel. Further, Dante reflexively self-positions himself as perhaps the greatest poet using the language of painters and writers. His focus on the theme of long lasting fame creates a stark contrast between the glory of practitioners of those arts and the anonymity evident in Dante’s portrayal of various artisans in the text.154

2.2 Skilled Practice

The ways in which technology influenced or interfaced with attitudes toward work has been examined across fields for some time. Early twentieth century critic, Max

Weber, insisted that Christianity created conditions that allowed technological development.155 More recent historians, including George Ovitt, caution against technological determinism and instead maintain that Christianity adjusted itself to a

154 Credette Cimabue ne la pittura tener lo campo, e ora ha Giotto il grido, sì che la fama di colui è scura: così ha tolto l’uno a l’altro Guido la gloria de la lingua; e forse è nato chi l’uno e l’altro caccerà del nido.

In painting Cimabue thought he held the field, and now it’s Giotto they acclaim- the former only keeps a shadowed fame.

So did one Guido, from the other, wrest the glory of our tongue-and he perhaps is born who will chase both out of the nest. (Purgatorio 11.94-99)

155 See Ehmer, Joseph, and Catharina Lis. The Idea of Work in Europe from Antiquity to Modern Times. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2009, 479.

83

world that was already being altered by technology. The spinning wheel and the gualchiera, a type of hydraulic mill introduced in the tenth century that mechanized the process of fulling, are two major developments in textile production practices. 156 While the origins of the spinning wheel are unclear, most attribute its origin to India or China and agree it began to appear in Europe in the late Middle Ages. Yet before the introduction of the Jacquard loom, there are few other developments that might be classified as large-scale technological innovations in textile production: perhaps a different approach is called for.

Ingold suggests the term technology itself is anachronistic in this context and we should instead be focusing on craftsmanship for two reasons. First, the term technology came into common use in the seventeenth century when Newtonian and Cartesian models represented the idea of the universe as a vast machine. It replaced the previously used term, tekhnē, used for skilled making. Ingold identifies the proto-capitalist society of early Renaissance Italy as the moment just prior to or during the shift from tekhnē to technology. Second, the modern conception of technology divides everything into separate components at the cost of losing or marginalizing the performative and poetic aspects of tool use.157 It is exactly those elements of tool use I wish to recuperate and highlight. It is within the complex and nuanced interaction between artisan and tool that tacit craft knowledge resides and an examination of craftsmanship is possible.

156 Because of water needs, the gualchiera was usually located outside the city or along a waterway such as a canal. See Checcoli, Ippolita. “La arte della lana gentile fra Duecento e Trecento: uomini e produzione.” dpm quaderni, 2008, 252.

157 Ingold writes: “The image of the artisan, immersed with the whole of his being in a sensuous engagement with the material, was gradually supplanted by that of the operative whose job it is to set in motion an exterior system of productive forces.” Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. (Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000), 295.

84

To aid our examination, let us consider to what extent the artisanal techniques depicted by Dante and Boccaccio are skilled practice. What work is privileged, obscured, or recuperated in the text(s)?158 The Ciompi Revolt of 1379 has been studied extensively yet, according to Frick, it shows just one section of textile workers and excludes women almost entirely.159 However, she notes, the scholarly interest in the revolt provided a path to learning about people who were previously entirely excluded from attention in

Renaissance studies. Just as haptic does not equal touch, an interaction between a hand, tool, and material does not equal skilled practice. One of the primary reasons Ingold’s model for skilled labor works so effectively is his recognition that technical relations are embedded in social relations.160 Scholars like Annapurna Mamadipudi and Wiebe Bijker call for an acknowledgment of “technological innovation as a fundamentally social and cultural knowledge practice.”161 Both Dante and Boccaccio are astute observers of and deeply invested in social relations. Therefore a holistic examination of the entire artisanal network aids our understanding of how work roles are deployed in these texts.

Ingold defines five dimensions of skilled practice. The first includes intentionality

158 Sophie Pitman drew my attention to the often, unrecognized contributions of who we would now identify as undocumented workers in workshops in Early Modern Europe, particularly women and children. While their efforts were not systematically recorded, traces of their contributions, for example small child size thimbles excavated from the Thames, provide corroborating evidence of their work. Pitman, Sophie. “Reconstructing the Renaissance.” Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bard Graduate Center, New York City. 30 April 2019. Lecture.

159 Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 5.

160 Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. (Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000), 290. See also Mamidipudi, Annapurna, Syamasundari B., and Wiebe Bijker. “Mobilising Discourses: Handloom as sustainable socio-technology.” Economic & Political Weekly. no. 47 (25), (2012), 41-51.

161 Mamidipudi, Annapurna, and Wiebe E. Bijker. “Innovation in Indian Handloom Weaving.” Technology and Culture, Volume 59, Number 3, (July 2018), 509-545.

85

and functionality; the next views skill as an attribute of a system of relations constituted by the presence of an artisan in his/her environment. In his third, skill involves quality of care, judgment, and dexterity and is not merely the application of mechanical force. Skill is transmitted, in the fourth, from one generation to another through practical hands-on experience and not just the transmission of recipes or instructions or formulae. Last, skill is not executing a pre-existing design but generating the forms of artifacts.162 The last two components raise intriguing questions about the transmission of knowledge within and across various positions in the textile industry. Workshops, botteghe, trade fairs, and a tailor’s shop for instance provide a physical space in which individuals of varying social stations might interact. Frick observes: “the irony that the making of clothing functioned to unite people across class lines, while at the same time the clothes themselves were manipulated to amplify the distinction between those classes.”163 Since we do not have access to contemporary weaving patterns or tailors instructions for instance, most of what we understand about technique comes from artistic representation, written sources, and evaluation of extant weaving samples to determine or guess at techniques.

2.3. Tools, Techniques, and Work Roles

Dante and Boccaccio make explicit reference to the tools used in creating textiles.

One particularly generative trio of terms occurs in Inferno 20: l’ago, la spuola, and ’l fuso (the needle, the shuttle, and the spindle). Boccaccio repeats this list with a slight

162 Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000, 290.

163 Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 4.

86

modification in the proemio of the Decameron citing l’ago, ’l fuso and l’arcolaio (the needle, the spindle, and the wool-winder).164 Both authors situate these tools within a gendered discourse. In the following section I use these tools as a launching pad to explore the techniques, work roles, and processes that they evoke. When fruitful, I point out inter-textual and intra-textual connections across texts and authors. I compare the textual representations with the historical record and contemporary depictions in order to untangle fact from fiction and reveal additional meaning. In the fourth bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell we find le triste, the female soothsayers who put aside the needle, shuttle, and spindle to become diviners. Instead of producing cloth, they cast spells and exchange their traditional textile tools for the tools of prognostication, herbs, and effigies:

Vedi le triste che lasciaron l’ago, la spuola e ’l fuso, e fecersi ’ndivine; fecer malie con erbe e con imago

See those sad women who had left their needle, shuttle, and spindle to become diviners; they cast their spells with herbs and effigies (Inferno 20.121-123)

This tightly packed tercet unleashes a discourse on textile production that spreads across all three cantiche. Following Ingold’s premise that tools are like words in that

“they mediate relations between human subjects and the equally purposive non-human agencies with which they perceive themselves to be surrounded,” each tool articulation in the text gestures towards specific techniques, work roles, and embedded relationships

164 Boccaccio writes: “in soccorso e rifugio di quelle che amano, per ciò che all’altre è assai l’ago e ‘l fuso e l’arcolaio,” (as support and diversion for those ladies in love to those others who are not I leave the needle, spindle, and wool winder [Dec., proemio, 13]).

87

between artisans and materials that reinforce Dante’s message.165 I first tackle the spindle, next the needle, and reserve the shuttle for chapter three.

2.3.1. The Spindle and Spinning

After the needle, the female soothsayers in Inferno 20 cast aside the shuttle, or spuola. I address the spuola, and the specific practice of weaving, in chapter three. The next tool mentioned by Dante, the fuso, or spindle, turns fibers such as wool or flax into yarn. Typically comprised of a small wooden or metal rod, the spindle is often tapered in order to hold the material (see figure 2.)

Figure 2 Spindles (wood and iron). Image taken at Museo del Tessuto Prato, Italy. Photographed by author 2017.

A cylindrical disk that weights the rod, called a whorl, can be attached to increase and maintain the speed of spinning. According to Phipps, “The art of spinning lies in

165 Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000, 320.

88

maintaining a consistent amount of fiber to be pulled and a consistent amount of twist to the yarn, so that the end result is even and uniformly twisted lengths of yarn.”166 Field explains a range of yarns can be spun, from hard-wearing worsted to soft fluffy woolen yarn.167 Postrel astutely observes, “Even more than weaving, spinning mounds of tiny fibres into usable threads turns nothing into something, chaos into order.”168 The creative aspect of spinning highlighted by Postrel is rarely acknowledged elsewhere. Spinning was often depicted, in Duecento and Trecento Italian art, as alternately a punishment, associated with Eve and her expulsion from the garden, or as an act of bestowing grace.169 Warr investigates a series of frescoes in San Michele, Paganico near Siena depicting the women of the Humiliati convent spinning and weaving wool. She attempts to untangle the role of the Humiliati in the wool industry, the role of women in the order and the industry, and how the concept of salvation is depicted in the frescoes. One of the primary obstacles she encounters is the privileging of merchants, and therefore males in the documentation. However there is some documentation of the role of women in the initial carding of the wool and of their involvement in the making of cloth in the order. In the visual iconography of the miniatures, female members of the order are shown both spinning and weaving, in one case a completed tunic.170 Both men and women, according to a sermon given to the order, labor to make cloth; the sisters of the order “employ the

166 Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 73.

167 Field, Anne. Spinning Wool: Beyond the Basics. London: Trafalgar Square, 2010, 1.

168 Postrel,Virginia. “How Textiles Repeatedly Revolutionized Technology.” Aeon Journal, 12 March 2019. .aeon.co/essays/how-textiles-repeatedly-revolutionised-human-technology.

169 See Warr, Cordelia. Dressing for Heaven. Religious Clothing in Italy 1215-1545. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 181.

170 Ibid., 185.

89

spindle with their hands.”171 Warr finds the figures in the frescos to be partially allegorical but also partially representative of women’s role within the Humiliati. The spindle emphasizes both the exercise of charity in general and the specific type of charity outlined by Saint Bernardino of Siena who insisted that sewing a shift and donating it to a poor man was more pleasing to God than donating two shifts, privileging the construction, the act of making, over the final product.

Revisiting the depiction of an idealized Florentine past in Paradiso 15, we see

Dante pairs the spindle with the pennecchio or spool.172 A spool is the instrument on which the thread is wound once it has been spun. Even though men and women spun silk on mechanized wheels, Sarti notes domestic spinning was an almost exclusively female activity.173 Domesticity and gender figure prominently in Dante’s portrayal of the wives’ at the spindle and spool, “al fuso e al pennecchio.” Their labor is intimately connected to their position in the family as wives and mothers. Dante locates one beside the cradle, “la culla,” soothing her infant with her speech. She recounts origin stories, which trace their roots back to Rome, Fiesole, and Troy as she draws threads from the distaff:

l’altra, traendo a la rocca la chioma, favoleggiava con la sua famiglia d’i Troiani, di Fiesole e di Roma.

171 Ibid., 185.

172 e vidi quell d’I Nerli e quell del Vecchio esser contenti a le pelle scoperta, e le sue donne al fuso e al pennecchio.

I saw dei Nerli and del Vecchio content to wear their suits of unlined skins, and saw their wives at spindle and at spool. (Paradiso 15.112-117)

173 Sarti, Rafaella. Europe at home: family and material culture, 1500-1800. Translated by Allan Cameron. New Haven: Yale University Press. 192.

90

another, as she drew threads from the distaff, would tell, among her household, tales of Trojans, and tales of Fiesole, and tales of Rome (Paradiso 15.124-126)

The distaff, la rocca, holds the unspun fibers before they are spun onto the spindle.174 In this passage it signals a pre-productive moment, the instant before creation.

The distaff stages the concept of beginnings, mirroring the origin stories being recounted and combined with the threads, la chioma, reinforces the trope of spinning as narrative.

In a heaven heavily focused on patrilineage, fathers and sons, and on patriarchal genealogy, the gendered depiction of narrative paired with the preparation for spinning suggests that women’s role and engagement in the production of history are relegated to oral tradition, to “old wives tales.”

In a context where we know that the diversity of roles for women in the textile industry decreased along with the proto-industrialization of the industry, the picture

Dante paints of women spinning as they sit beside cradles transmits cultural motifs about femininity and virtue; these are motifs that Boccaccio challenges in some of his depictions of spinners that I will describe below. Earlier in Purgatorio 21, in an evocation of the three mythological Fates, Dante uses a different word for distaff, conocchia:

Ma perché lei che dì e notte fila non li avea tratta ancora la conocchia che Cloto impone a ciascuno e compila,

but since she who spins night and day had not yet spun the spool that Clotho sets upon the distaff and adjusts for everyone, (Purgatorio 21.25-27)

174 Phipps, Elena. Looking at textiles: a guide to technical terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 28. 91

This succinct passage demonstrates the tension between the traditionally powerful mythic associations and the relevant contemporary connotations surrounding the practice of spinning; both are simultaneously embedded into the terms spool and distaff. In

Purgatorio 21, Statius is curious about Dante’s physical presence on the Mountain since everyone else there is deceased. He learns that Dante’s journey there has been divinely ordained and that he is alive — his thread has not yet been measured. While the mythological Fates wield the ultimate power in their spinning and Dante portrays the women of an idealized Florentine past as content storytellers, the reality for female spinners in Trecento Florence was a life of poverty and miserable wages.175 In this instance and several others, Dante’s construal of the tools of spinning privileges the figurative and allegorical at the expense of the material. While Herlihy views spinning as unskilled labor, Postrel argues that spinning was: a time-consuming, highly skilled craft, requiring dexterity and care. Even after the spread of the spinning wheel in the Middle Ages, the finest, most consistent yarn, as well as strong warp threads in general, still came from the most ancient of techniques: drop spinning, using a hooked or notched stick with a weight as a flywheel.176

The recourse to an earlier technique, drop spinning, with which the artisan has more control, reinforces the importance of dexterity in eliciting a desirable final product, thread. Ingold insists that a tool when not used in service of technique remains an inert object. It is within the intention of the skilled subject or user that the tool functions as such and has impact on the raw material. Ingold observes “the tool is not a mere mechanical adjunct to the body, serving to deliver a set of commands issued to it by the

175 LeGoff, Jacques. Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, 69.

176 Postrel,Virginia. “How Textiles Repeatedly Revolutionized Technology.” Aeon Journal, 12 March 2019. .aeon.co/essays/how-textiles-repeatedly-revolutionised-human-technology.

92

mind; rather it extends the whole person.”177 He educes the embodied, tacit knowledge of the spinner-practitioner described so well by Anne Field in her seminal work Spinning

Wool Beyond the Basics. After ample, detailed, and quantitative instruction on plying twists, modulating spinning rhythm, and altering draft length she writes:

All these figures can be a great help but it is your eye and plans for the yarn that are the most important. If you think the wool looks and feels too soft for the end use, add some more twist. If the yarn is too hard, reduce the twists. If it is too thin, add more wool into the drafting area. Your judgment is all-important.178

The importance of judgment amidst the constant bio-feedback of the sensory properties of the yarn speaks to several dimensions of Ingold’s definition of skilled practice; particularly skill as dexterity beyond mechanical force, practical hands-on experience as mode of skill transmission, and the concept of generating forms of artifacts — not just executing pre-existing designs.179 While not rewarded well financially, spinning undoubtedly required immense time, much practice, and embodied skill.

Now, I would like to bring Boccaccio into the conversation, specifically to compare his representations of spinners to Dante’s. Recall, the purported authorial intent of the Decameron, as Boccaccio outlines in his proemio, is to provide succor and diversion for women via his one hundred stories, specifically to the women in love: “in soccorso e rifugio di quelle che amano, per ciò che all'altre è assai, intendo di raccontare cento novelle, o favole o parabole o istorie” (I intend to provide succor and diversion for

177 Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000, 319.

178 Emphasis mine. Field, Anne. Spinning Wool Beyond the Basics. Ed.2. Trafalgar Square: Shoal Bray Press, 2002, 110.

179 Recall Ingold’s definition of skilled practice, particularly: “Skill is transmitted from one generation to another through practical hands on experience and not just the transmission of recipes/instructions or formulae, and 5. Skill is not executing a pre-existing design but generating the forms of artifacts.” Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000, 290.

93

the ladies, but only for those who are in love [. . .] I shall narrate a hundred stories or fables or parables or histories [Dec. proemio, 13]). To the others, he famously leaves a trio of textile tools: l'ago e ’l fuso e l'arcolaio. With the repetition and augmentation of

Dante’s terminology, this section of the text divides women into two groups and in a meta-literary maneuver likens the text itself to a tool. Yet the binary division between spinning and telling stories is a decoy. Boccaccio knows that spinning and narrative are inextricably linked and in fact he will insert the language of textile production into the plot of almost every novella in the Decameron. In his boldest depiction, he elevates a lowly, poverty stricken, female spinner into a heroic protagonist in Decameron 4.7.

But first, an anonymous Florentine filatrice appears briefly in Decameron 3.3.

The plot revolves around a highborn noble woman and her entrepreneur husband, “uno artefice lanaiuolo,” whom she resents. Artefice, derived from the Latin artifex, indicates craftsperson or expert practitioner. 180 The lanaiuoli were governing members of the Arte della Lana guild. Munro explains:

They [lanaiuoli] were entrepreneurs in the cloth trade, consisting of family firms or, more commonly, commercial partnerships; and they organized production under a putting-out system of production. It is often called (especially in northern Europe) the domestic system of production, since so many manufacturing processes took place within the homes of the artisans, who used their own tools.181

Within the hierarchy of artisans, the lanaiuolo occupied a superior position in terms of power, money, and status. In the novella, his wife’s resentment is not strictly fiscal, the husband is fairly wealthy, but rather an issue of nobility or more precisely his

180 Definition and derivation taken from “Artefice.” Accademia della Crusca. www.lessicografia.it/Controller?lemma=ARTEFICE&rewrite=1. Accessed August 5, 2019.

181 Munro, John H. “The Rise, Expansion, and Decline of the Italian Wool-Based Cloth Industries, 1100– 1730: A Study in International Competition, Transaction Costs, and Comparative Advantage Italian textiles.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser, 9, 45-207.

94

lack of nobility. She locates the source of her distaste within a list of his professional skills. She perceives them to be limited to the following: “divisare un mescolato o fare ordire una tela o con una filatrice disputare del filato”(to devise a blend, to set up a warp, or haggle about yarn with a spinner [Dec. 3.3.6 ]). Not only is this assessment dismissive of the knowledge and computation necessary to design a successful blend, the intricate complexity of setting up a warp, and the managerial skills called upon for these tasks, but it is also an inaccurate representation of the duties and responsibilities of a lanaiuolo.

Munro contrasts late medieval Italian lanaiuoli with their Flemish and British counterparts noting the Flemish were more master-weavers who employed assistants in their shops:

In contrast, the late medieval Italian lanaiuoli, even if they were not the great industrial capitalists misleadingly portrayed by Alfred Doren . . . did exercise far greater economic and social control over the cloth industry and trade than did their Flemish counterparts: in securing the wools and other raw materials, in organizing most of the cloth production, and in arranging for the sales of the finished cloths. In general, they subcontracted the preparatory production processes to various fattori, or factors, who themselves put out the textile inputs to a variety of domestic workers and artisans.182

Munro includes the capodieci (those who cleaned and sorted wool), the fattore delle pettine (who oversaw the combing), fattore di cardo (who oversaw the carding), stamaiuoli (combed wool to hand spinners to make the warps), the lanini (carder wool to the wheel spinners for the wefts) as all working under the auspices of the lanaiuoli.183

Most of these workers labored in their own homes and were paid piecework in contrast to the weavers, fullers, dyers and shearers who worked directly under the lanaioulo’s

182 Munro, John H. “The Rise, Expansion, and Decline of the Italian Wool-Based Cloth Industries, 1100– 1730: A Study in International Competition, Transaction Costs, and Comparative Advantage Italian textiles.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser, 9, 45-207.

183 I am indebted to Munro’s excellent description of roles and processes.

95

supervision in an urban context.184 The complexity of the lanaiuolo’s work as belied by the historical record stands in stark contrast to Boccaccio’s character’s perception of it.

The juxtaposition both further characterizes her ignorance and challenges society’s conception of nobility and its relationship to economic power. The marginalization of the anonymous wool spinner, and focus on the wealthy characters in Decameron 3.3, is inverted in Decameron 4.7 where the plot revolves around a wool spinner and wool deliver boy.

In Decameron 4.7, Emilia narrates the tragic love story of Simona and her lover

Pasquino. What has been overlooked and insufficiently explored in the criticism is the radical novelty of Simona as a primary character. She is most likely the first example in

Western literature of a female wool-spinner protagonist.185 In the frame narrative, we learn that Simona, an active subject, loves Pasquino. As the story begins, the first detail revealed about her identity is that she is the daughter of a poor father. Due to her impoverished economic situation she is forced to go to work: “e quantunque le convenisse con le proprie braccia il pan che mangier volea guadagnare e filando lana sua vita reggesse” (although she was obliged to earn every morsel that passed her lips by working with her hands, and obtained her livelihood by spinning wool [Dec. 4.7.6]). The use of the verb guadagnare reinforces the obligatory nature of Simona’s labor, spinning wool. According to Jacques LeGoff, pay was so low for wool spinners at this time that they were often accused of being prostitutes. In his portrayal of Simona, Boccaccio

184 Munro, John H. “The Rise, Expansion, and Decline of the Italian Wool-Based Cloth Industries, 1100– 1730: A Study in International Competition, Transaction Costs, and Comparative Advantage Italian textiles.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser, 9, 45-207.

185 Branca notes: “c’è Simona, una appunto delle filatrici – la prima delle nostre letterature – che lavoravano a casa loro, alle porte della città o in contado.” [Branca 1018 (n11)].

96

reflects the historically accurate cultural context in which he is writing and at the same time strategically counters many of the prevailing social attitudes towards wool spinners.

The object of Simona’s desire is Pasquino, a delivery boy for the lanaiuolo, wool merchant, for whom Simona is spinning. Riello describes the organization of the

European woolen industry as characterized by a close and hierarchical relationship between merchant and spinner/weaver to the detriment or loss of power of artisan. As a point of comparison he cites the Indian cotton industry where the relationship between merchant and spinner or weaver was mediated by many village contacts. In contrast,

Riello asserts, “the situation in Europe was different. Here merchants had a much stronger role in controlling production.”186 Yet the lanaiuolo is almost completely absent from this novella. Instead, Boccaccio focuses on Simona, Pasquino, and his wool worker friends.187

Textile labor was highly stratified in Florence. Within the hierarchy of the textile industry, Pasquino also occupies a low position, though not as low as that of a spinner.

LeGoff explains the “fragmentation was horizontal to a degree but vertical to an even greater degree. Weavers were placed near the bottom of the scale in textiles, but above fullers and dyers; cobblers below bootmakers, surgeons and barber-apothecaries below medical doctors.”188 The location of the fictional spinning is this novella is not identified

186 Riello, Giorgio. Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 46-69.

187 Frick writes about the ‘peripheralization’ of the popolo minuto asking: “Was there, in fact, any ‘middle,’ or were there simply two distinct ‘cities’ of people within the rings of walls in Florence, with the rich in the center and poor at the margins?” See Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002,

188 LeGoff, Jacques. Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, 69.

97

but historically spinners would typically work outside of the city at home and have raw wool delivered to and collected from them and weighed to avoid graft.

Despite her poverty, Boccaccio ennobles not just Simona, the woman, but her vocation as well by linking the physical aspects of love’s affliction, expressed through the tropes of courtly love such as heaving sighs and passionate desires, with the physical labor of spinning wool; “filando a ogni passo di lana filata che al fuso avvolgeva mille sospiri piú cocenti che fuoco gittava, di colui ricordandosi che a filar gliele aveva data.”

(she heaved a thousand sighs, more burning that fire itself, with every yard of woolen thread she wrapped around her spindles, recalling he one who had given her the wool.

[Dec. 4.7.7]) Simona channels erotic energy into the wool she spins, creating the yarn and manifesting her physical connection to Pasquino. Her close physical proximity to and close engagement with the tools and material facilitate this transmutation. Ingold explains the difference between tools and machine is simply a matter of degree from the human body on the one end to complete automaton on the other.189 Simona’s breath and sighs are absorbed by and transfigured into her spinning as her labor transforms her relationship with Pasquino from transactional to romantic.

Pasquino proposes a trip to the garden for a picnic, with the implication of an erotic tryst. Usher notes: “The move to the garden is, however, a clear ironic reference: the proletarians are exceptionally entering the locus amoenus of the aristocratic love- tradition.”190 Branca stresses the replication of Dantean language from Purgatorio 5.100 in the description of Pasquino’s death, “perdè la vista e la parola“ (he lost all power of

189 Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000.

190 Usher, Jonathan. “Simona and Pasquino: ‘Cur Moriatur Homo Cui Salvia Crescit in Horto?’" MLN, Vol. 106, No. 1, (1991), 1-14.

98

sight and speech [Dec. 4.7.13]). With the location of the orto and the evocation of courtly love literature, Boccaccio moves the focus from their working lives to the drama of their imminent deaths, shifting from realism to fantasy. During the romantic picnic, Pasquino uses a sage leaf to clean his teeth and tragically dies.

Following his mysterious death, Simona is put on trial first by Pasquino’s peers from the wool industry and then by the podestà, the judicial authority. Pasquino’s friends are identified by colloquial and pejorative nicknames. Their employment defines their social position. While historically carders and combers did not exercise any particular social or political power, the wool guild did. In fact the Arte della Lana became so powerful in Florence that it began to form its own independent jurisdiction within the city with complete control over transactions, labor relations, and the creation of a quasi- corporate police force including a criminal officer who could conduct workplace inspections. The guild also had its own prison.191 By merging the wool workers with the podestà in this section, Boccaccio interjects into the courtly garden scene a reference to real power relations playing out in Florence within and outside the hierarchy of the textile industry. In her own defense, Simona re-enacts eating the sage leaf and inadvertently poisons herself.

At this dramatic moment, Emilia, the narrator, interrupts the narrative to address her protagonists, using the trope apostrophe that is associated with epic heroes, not proletarian wool-workers: “O felici anime”(Oh happy souls [Dec. 4.7.19]). Explaining how Fortune protected Simona’s innocence against her accusers, Emilia describes

191 On the social and political power of the wool guild, see Franceschi, Franco. “Lane permesse e lane proibite nella Toscana fiorentina dei secoli XIV-XV: logiche economiche e scelte ‘politiche.’” La pastorizia mediterranea. Storia e diritto (secoli XI-XX), Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Alghero, 8-11 novembre 2006), Edited by Antonello Mattone and Pinuccia F. Simbula. Rome: Carocci, 2011, 886.

99

Pasquino’s friends in disparaging and socially accurate language: “forse scardassieri o più vili uomini” (as wool carders or worse [Dec. 4.7.20).192 Boccaccio, through Emilia, thus exalts Simona, the wool-spinner, while simultaneously disparaging wool workers as a group. In the case of Simona, the individual is de-essentialized, removed from sweeping generalizations about her category and instead judged on an individual basis. In the case of the male wool workers, the dominant stereotypes prevail.

The judge issues an edict to cut down the sage revealing the true cause of both poisonings, a toad. The four false accusers bury the swollen bodies of the dead lovers in the church of San Paolo. Simona’s spinning, unable to rescue her from death, gives her a textual life and a poetic death that was heretofore inconceivable in both literary precedent and social context. Boccaccio’s inference that a wool-spinner could be worthy of this type of literary adventure is radical but by no means ideological, regarding women or wool spinners. He depicts several other named, female wool-spinners in much different terms.

We have discussed Decameron 4.6, the novella of Simona and Pasquina. Two other novelle in the Decameron feature named female wool-spinners: Peronella of

Decameron 7.2 and La Belcolore of Decameron 8.2. At the beginning of Decameron 7.2, the narrator Filostrato affirms the entwined social station and vocations of the two

Neapolitan protagonists. Giannello is a poor muratore, or mason, and his young wife,

Peronella, is a spinner:

192 Scardassi also appears on day three when the adulterous couple laughs at the ignorance of the wool merchant husband: “E appresso, prendendo l’un dell’altro piacere, ragionando e ridendo molto della semplicità di frate bestia, biasimando i lucignoli e’ pettini e gli scardassi, insime con gran diletto si sollazzarono.” (Then each enjoying the other to the accompaniment of many a hilarious comment about the stupid friar’s naïveté, and random jibes about such draperly concerns as slubbing and combing and carding, they gamboled and frolicked until they very nearly died of bliss. [Dec. 3.3.54]).

100

Egli non è ancora guari che in Napoli un povero uomo prese per moglie una bella e vaga giovinetta chiamata Peronella, e esso con l'arte sua, che era muratore, ed ella filando, guadagnando assai sottilmente, la lor vita reggevano come potevano il meglio.

Tis no long time since at Naples a poor man, a mason by craft, took to wife a fair and amorous maiden--Peronella was her name--who eked out by spinning what her husband made by his craft; and so the pair managed as best they might on very slender means.193

After establishing their equivalent and paltry economic contributions to the shared household, Boccaccio highlights a key divergence in their places of work and daily routines. Recalling the model of the uomo mobile /donna racchiusa explicated in the proemio, Gianello leaves the home and Peronella remains in the domestic sphere.

Because of this arrangement, she is able to consistently sneak her lover into the home and to successfully exploit gender norms for a personal sexual advantage. Coming to the official trick that constitutes the plot of Decameron 7.2, one day when Giannello returns home unexpectedly, Peronella quickly directs her lover to hide in a tub, unlocks the door, and confronts Gianello with a series of complaints in the guise of rhetorical questions about their economic station in an attempt to distract him from and obscure her offense.

She asks: e se tu fai cosí, di che viverem noi? onde avrem noi del pane? Credi tu che io sofferi che tu m'impegni la gonnelluccia e gli altri miei pannicelli, che non fo il dí e la notte altro che filare, tanto che la carne mi s'è spiccata dall'unghia, per potere almeno aver tanto olio, che n'arda la nostra lucerna? if so, what are we to live on? whence shall we get bread to eat? Thinkest thou I will let thee pawn my gown and other bits of clothes? Day and night I do nought else but spin, insomuch that the flesh is fallen away from my nails, that at least I may have oil enough to keep our lamp alight.194

193 Decameron 7.2.7.

194 Decameron 7.2.14. 101

Her complaints reflect the dire economic reality for a spinner. Gianello explains his return is due to an unexpected holiday and shares the good news that he found a man who will pay them cinque gigliati for the tub. Peronella in her response, once again, exploits gender expectations. She points out that he as a man who goes out in the world, with the implication of the privilege that accompanies his gender, sold the tub for five but that she as a woman, who barely left the house and with the implication of all the barriers that accompanies her gender, sold the same tub for seven. These jabs provide the necessary explanation for the lover’s location in the tub and set up the salacious conclusion of the tale when the husband cleans out the interior of the tub while unbeknownst to him the lover is having sex with his wife against the exterior of the tub.

The husband is as unaware of his wife’s activities when he is enclosed in the tub as he is when he is outside the home. All of this comically points to the gender norms and occupation that compel Peronella to remain inside the home

The physical dichotomy of interior and exterior sides of the tub replicate the strict gender categories this novel works to subvert. Once more, Boccaccio exposes the flaw in the foolish thinking that the practice of securing women within enclosed domestic spaces could effectively police their behavior inside. While the husband is concealed in the tub,

Peronella’s tryst on the outside is revealed to the readers. The inner/outer opposition of the tub combined with the rhetorical conceal/reveal technique and her identity as a wool spinner conjure, for me, a subtle connection to the two-sidedness of textiles; how stitching can be revealed on one side and not the other and how folds can make the surface continuous. More materially, unlike the ennobled characterization of Simona’s romantic and marital intentions, Peronella’s sexual adventures are extra-marital and result

102

in financial gains. Is this an empowered riff on the prostitution rumors that plagued spinners or another example of a wife acting in a manner, decidedly more clever than her husband? Or perhaps, both.

In Decameron 8.2, Panfilo narrates the story of a priest from Varlungo, a town near Florence, who seduces a woman named Monna Belcolore. This novella fits under a rubric explored in chapter one of priests preaching one set of behaviors but not personally adhering to them. In his attempt to seduce the lady, the priest offers her several finished textiles, including shoes, a silk kerchief, and a wool belt.195 Belcolore announces:

Egli mi conviene andar sabato a Firenz e a render lana che io ho filata e a far racconciare il filatoio mio: e se voi mi prestate cinque lire, che so che l'avete, io ricoglierò dall'usuraio la gonnella mia del perso e lo scaggiale dai dí delle feste che io recai a marito, ché vedete che non ci posso andare a santo né in niun buon luogo, perché io non l'ho; e io sempre mai poscia farò ciò che voi vorrete.

Saturday I have to go to Florence to deliver some wool I’ve spun and to have my spinning wheel fixed; if you will lend me five lira, which I know you’ve got, I can go to the pawnbroker’s and pick up my dark skirt and my waistband which I got married in, for you see, without them I can’t possibly go to church or to any other nice place- and then I’ll do anything you want, always.196

Belcolore’s location outside the city and need to deliver wool to Florence reflect the practice of an urban lanaiuolo using the labor of spinners located in the countryside.

Riello notes both weavers and spinners did not own materials or tools.197 They often rented their equipment. In contrast to Simona, who appears to spin by hand and thus is probably producing thread destined to form warps, Peronella works with a spinning

195 The priest asks: “o vuogli un paio di scarpette o vuogli un frenello o vuogli una bella fetta di stame o ciò che tu vuogli.“ (Do you want a pair of pretty little shoes, or a silk kerchief, or a belt of fine wool, or what is it you want?” [Dec. 8.2.25]).

196 Decameron 8.2.28.

197 Riello, Giorgio. Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 66. 103

wheel and most likely produces thread for wefts. Simona, whose hands were in direct contact with the thread, experienced unmediated exchange between her passion and the material. In contrast, a mechanized tool mediates Peronella’s interaction with the material. With the figure of the wool delivery boy absent, Peronella’s broken spinning wheel moves the plot forward and draws our attention to a textile-adjacent industry: the shops in which workers repair tools. Similarly, the pawnbroker makes money by using clothing as collateral, in a potent reminder that clothes are currency.

The above citation from Decameron 8.2 also highlights the limited amount of clothing Belcolore owns; the waistband she got married in is her only option for church ware. The casual references to the resources and lack of resources point to a re-use, repair, and recycle economy of clothing. Intuiting Belcore’s suspicion regarding his lack of cash and empty promises, the priest offers her a cloak in lieu of money: “io ti lascerò pegno questo mio tabarro di sbiavato” (I’ll leave you this blue cloak of mine as a guarantee. [Dec. 8.2.33]) To prove its value, he makes assertions regarding the provenance of the cloak’s material source material.198 Then he makes additional claims about the cloak’s quality including information about the chain of custody; he procured it from Lotto, an old-clothes dealer. He further appeals to authority by citing the expertise of Buglietto, identified as expert judge of fabrics, who allegedly reports that the cloak’s value is higher by five lire than what the priest paid.

The priest literalizes the metaphorical connections between textile and text, or speech in this case, when he leaves his manto, or cloak, as a pledge to her. After multiple examples within this novella of clothing functioning as money, the cloak now transformed into a promise; it functions as indemnity against future actions. Subsequently

198 See chapter one. 104

there is a ruse involving Monna Belcolore’s neighbor’s son borrowing her mortar. The priest, in an attempt to reclaim his cloak, declares the cloak was on loan in exchange for the now being returned mortar. Belcolore reluctantly removes the cloak from her linen chest and speaking in code rebuffs the priest: “s'ella non ci presterà il mortaio, io non presterrò a lei il pestello; vada l'un per l'altro” (‘you will never grind any more sauce in her mortar’ he says ‘I won’t lend her my pestle’ [Dec. 8.2.45]). This sexual metaphor uses kitchen tools to highlight the connection between idle hands and vulnerability to moral threats present in the portrayal of both Peronella and Belcolore. Neither of them receive the elevation bestowed upon Simona, but each are deeply motivated by or attempt to improve their poor economic conditions with their sexuality.

2.3.2 The Needle and its Practitioners

The needle, l’ago, is used in multiple textile applications. In Trecento Italy, needlework could span the spectrum from domestic production of family linen produced by uncloistered females to the highly regulated work done by male embroiderers, ricamatori, as part of the luxury trade. Women across the economic spectrum oversaw or executed the making of personal linens. Some of this work was farmed out to camiciai, female craftspersons working on an informal basis.199 Because their work took place in the home and outside of the guild system, much of these women’s work remained invisible. The needle in Dante’s tercet is concomitant with the domestic sewing and needlework done exclusively by women and clearly conjures the womanly virtue described by Bray and explicated in chapter one. The needle is also used in tapestry,

199 Frick notes: “Other craftswomen ubiquitous in the Florentine needle trades were camiciai, who fashioned the most basic items of clothing, the family linens (panni lini and camicie), working on an informal basis.” See Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 39.

105

knitting, and leatherwork among other textile applications. A reference to leather, cuoio, intriguingly occurs in the tercet directly preceding this one. Just prior to the diviners of antiquity and the anonymous female soothsayers, Dante places Asdente, the shoemaker from Parma:200

Vedi Guido Bonatti; vedi Asdente, ch’avere inteso al cuoio e a lo spago ora vorrebbe, ma tardi si pente.

See there Guido Bonatti; see Asdente, who now would wish he had attended to his cord and leather, but repents too late. (Inferno 20.118-120)

According to Robert Davidsohn there were “over 1,500 shoemakers in the late

Trecento population of the city [Florence] who practiced their craft along with other artisans, from hosiers and belt and purse makers, to velveteers and embroiderers.”201

According to Stuard, customers dealt directly with tanners to procure the material and then selected their own shoemaker to construct the shoes.202 The shoemaker therefore had the same personal contact with their customer as the tailor. As Boccaccio writes: “Si non sit lanifex, non cerdo, unde vestes et calciamenta sumemus?” (If there were no woolworker, no cobbler, where would we get our clothes and our shoes?)203 In Florence,

200 Asdente is the nickname of Benvenuto, the shoemaker from Parma.

201 As noted by Carole Frick in Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 32.

202 According to Stuard: “Tanners dealt directly with the public out of their shops and then their customers chose their own shoemakers.” Stuard, Susan Mosher. Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-century Italy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, 149.

203 Genealogie 15.10.4.

106

shoemakers were typically part of the minor guilds along with the guild of furriers and skinners.204

Asdente, the shoemaker of Parma whom Dante damns among the diviners, gained fame as an astrologer. Salimbene, in his cronaca, recalled Asdente with admiration. 205 In

Inferno 20, Dante at once condemns Asdente and his actions while ennobling the figure of the cobbler. In the passage, the material, leather, and the tool, cord, are a direct signal to the work of the cobbler. The physical and quotidian labor of working with leather is contrasted with the more ethereal and damning practice of divination, which resulted in

Asdente’s permanent residence in hell. Leather is a significantly firmer and more resistant substrate than cloth.206 In addition to understanding the body of the wearer, the shoemaker working with leather would need to be familiar with how the former animal used its body in order to make decisions about what parts of that body to use for more or less flexibility in the final product.207 The implied physicality of the cobbler’s work is privileged over the mysterious and nefarious practice of prognostication.

In this canto about the transgression of looking into the future, there are multiple gestures to the past. The wistful sense communicated by “ma tardi si pente” is matched by a similarly nostalgic quality in the second instance of cuoio in the Commedia, now

204 With the Arte dei calzolai, arte dei vaiai e pelliciai.

205 [Chiavacci Leonardi 615(n118)].

206 For a discussion of material’s affordances see chapter one. See also Lehmann, Ann-Sophie. “The Matter of the Medium. Some Tools for an Art Theoretical Interpretation of Materials.“ The Matter of Art: Materials, Technologies, Meanings 1200-1700. Ed. C. Anderson, A. Dunlop, P. H. Smith, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. 21-41.

207 Thank you to Sophie Pitman for bringing my attention to this area.

107

paired with unlined skins.208 In all three references, leather is coded as part of an older, simpler, and more virtuous age. Here I would like to focus on the final line of this passage:

e vidi quel d’i Nerli e quel del Vecchio esser contenti a la pelle scoperta, e le sue donne al fuso e al pennecchio.

I saw dei Nerli and del Vecchio Content to wear their suits of unlined skins, And saw their wives at spindle and at spool. (Paradiso 15.112-117)

In contrast to the anonymous female soothsayers referred to only as le triste in

Inferno 20 and the anonymous wives at the spindle and spool in Paradiso 15, Asdente is identified by name. In fact, Dante uses his soprannome. Chiavacci Leonardi notes that

Dante characterizes Asdente in the Convivio (iv.16.4) as someone of great renown although “not noble.”209 The latter points to his social status, but the former deepens the contrast between the famous, named, male, former shoemaker and the anonymous female diviners who inhabit this bolgia. Gender is significant because it reveals ways in which the textile system was hierarchically structured and how it was represented artistically and in literature. Citing Herlihy, Bray notes that in an earlier period women dominated the skilled parts of cloth manufacture, including dyeing, and especially in cities their

208 Chapter one addressed this passage from Paradiso 15, from the perspective of changes in clothing for the average Florentine over the course of the twelfth century. Recall, in the Heaven of Mars, Dante describes Bellincion Berti wearing belts made of leather and bone in the context of an idyllic picture of the Florentines of earlier times and then shortly thereafter describes two members of the Nerli and Vecchio families wearing unlined skins. For more on the politics of this passage, see Kristina Olson’s insightful article “Shoes, Gowns and Turncoats: Reconsidering Cacciaguida’s History of Florentine Fashion and Politics.” Dante Studies, Volume 134, (2016), 26-47.

209 In the Convivio, Dante writes: “If nobility meant to be acclaimed and known by many then Asdente the cobbler of Parma would be nobler than any of his fellow citizens.” Alighieri, Dante. Convivio. Digital Dante. Translated by Carol Lansing. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2017.

108

roles diminished as guilds began to take control over more aspects of cloth production, finally excluding women from their ranks.210 Women’s roles became relegated to primarily spinning and washing. Herlihy argues this trend is somewhat countered later with the rise of the silk industry where women’s hands, perceived as more dexterous, were believed to be better able to work fine thread.211 On this subject, Miller notes that that men increasingly “gained control of the most lucrative sectors despite women still working in the industries.”212 Combined, the two tercets in Inferno 20, with Asdente and the female soothsayers, together perform textually the historically gendered erasure of women’s contributions to the textile industry. While men’s work, regulated by the highly complex guild structure, was culturally recognized, women’s vital contributions as spinners and potentially other roles remained anonymous.213

210 Bray, Francesca. “Women’s Work and Women’s Place.” Technology and Gender Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkely: University of California Press, 1997, 239-272.

211 For Herlihy, changing work roles in textile industry are not solely responsible for the decline in women’s social status. Herlihy classifies spinning as unskilled and notes for earlier period women dominated skilled parts of cloth manufacture including dyeing then especially in the cities roles diminish as guilds take control men take over all phases “the contribution of women is limited to such relatively unskilled works as spinning and washing.” Herlihy, David. Medieval Households. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 100-102.

212 Miller, Maureen C. Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 175.

213 Dante renders two additional meanings from ago, both referring to tools for different applications. L’ago can refer to the needle of compass (we use the same word in English for both types of needles). This use draws attention to the predictive powers of the word because the tools are situated with the soothsayers who predict the future and reminds us that tools are about knowledge systems. In Paradiso 12.28-30, we find: “del cor de l'una de le luci nove / si mosse voce, che l'ago a la stella, / parer mi fece, in volgermi al suo dove.” Essentially, the voice turns Dante-pilgrim into the needle of a compass. Dante (writer) turns himself (his body) into the tool when he turns to the dove where he is fulfilling the function of needle, which in this case points to the pole star. In Purgatorio 32.133, as the parade unfolds Dante depicts the allegory of the chariot. He inserts the simile of a wasp withdrawing its sting: “e come vespa che ritragge l'ago.” The function of the ago in this context is as a defense mechanism or weapon, the tool of a wasp.

109

2.3.2.1 Tailors

In addition to indicating feminine handiwork, the needle points to the more masculine coded work of the tailor. In Inferno 15, we encounter the first of two instances of sartor[i], paired with the term cruna, meaning eye of the needle. Dante-pilgrim describes how a group of souls in the seventh circle squint to look at him; “e sì ver’ noi aguzzavan le ciglia / come ’l vecchio sartor fa ne la cruna” (They knit their brows and squinted at us- /just as an old tailor at his needle’s eye [Inf. 15.20-21]).214 This simile brings a familiar visual to Dante’s description through a shared embodied experience with which his readership would be familiar. The ubiquity of the experience of threading a needle or watching someone else thread a needle illustrates how the souls in Inferno 15 contort their faces as they try to recognize him. Dante often pairs embodied movement with textile-related terms. Thus, Inferno 15 employs both the positively coded squinting and the negatively coded physical assault by the contrapasso on the bodies of the inhabitants of this bolgia. The contortion of their bodies in the contrapasso where they are forced to walk through raining fire on burning sand perverts the physicality of the recognition scene. Instead of leaning in and towards someone they are doubtless shrinking away from the pain.

Tailors engaged their whole bodies in their work and would typically sit on their worktables “in order to use their bodies to shape the fabric.”215 Due to these intense

214 Another example of squinting occurs in Inferno 7: “Ed elli a me: «Tutti quanti fuor guerci / sì de la mente in la vita primaia” (And he to me: “All these, to left and right /were so squint-eyed of mind in the first life [Inf. 7.40-41]).

215 Pitman, Sophie. “Sampling tailor’s techniques—launching the experimental phase.“ Refashioning the Renaissance. refashioningrenaissance.eu/sampling-tailors-techniques-launching-the-experiments/ Accessed 27 Feb. 2019.

110

physical demands tailors are suspected to have suffered from a high rate of physical deformities.216 The qualifying adjective vecchio exploits two notions around age and skill: one an implication of failing or overused eyesight and two the implication of the accumulation of a lifetime skill. Even if a tailor’s eyesight is fading, his history of embodied practice suggests that through muscle memory and conditioned practice those skills are still intact.217 Vecchio conjures the paternal valence Dante ascribes to Brunetto in this canto, adding to the warmth of this simile.

The primacy of the wool merchant-entrepreneur in the organization of the textile industry in Florence affected tailors. According to Frick, Florence’s identity as a cloth town made the situation for tailors difficult because strict regulations were imposed upon them. Unlike in other cities, tailors did not have their own guild and instead fell under the auspices of other guilds.218 There was a constant jockeying for position as tailors made their way in and out of various guild structures while the lanaiuoli maintained control over many other aspects of textile production. Tailors remained the rare, in the words of

Frick, outsiders.219 Perhaps most astutely Frick deduces:

Not actually producing a product from scratch, not simply providing a service, and by physical necessity, not being an anonymous artisan to his or her client, a tailor combined product with attentive intimacy, thus occupying a unique and somewhat problematic position.220

216 Pitman, Sophie. “Reconstructing the Renaissance.” Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bard Graduate Center, New York City. 30 April 2019. Lecture.

217 No one wants a tailor, or a doctor for that matter, who is on the first day of his/her job.

218 Until eventually becoming part of the Arte dei rigattieri e linaiuoli e sarti.

219 Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 14.

220 Ibid., 14.

111

It is that sense of intimacy that is present in Dante’s rather endearing use of the tailor, a community figure, in the recognition moment in Inferno 15. Pittman notes:

“While we do not know exactly how tailors measured their clients and then drafted patterns for them which ensured a flattering and fashionable fit, a close examination of surviving garments suggests that early modern tailors were true geometers, using proportion and curves to create elegant and balanced shapes.”221 The comparison to a geometer could not be more accurate when considering their primary task. Tailors had to make measurements on a three dimensional body, translate those measurements onto a two dimensional surface of cloth, cut that cloth, and then reshape and sew pieces together on or to fit a three dimensional body and accommodate its movements. These tasks also demanded close and privileged access to both male and female bodies. This access is the reason why in many different times and places we can see anxiety playing out in cultural stereotypes around tailors’ sexuality ranging from impotent to lecherous. Dante however favors a desexualized treatment of homosexuality in Inferno.222 In fact, understanding the social and cultural role of the tailor in Trecento Florence as Dante’s contemporary readers would have understood it prepares us for the important encounter at the end of this canto with Dante’s former teacher Brunetto Latini. There is familiarity and intimacy in the relationship between Dante and Brunetto that springs forth from their dialogue.

The tailor continues to cast his long shadow as this textile-rich sequence culminates with one of the Florentine shades grasping the hem of Dante’s gown: Where

221 Ibid.

222 See Barolini, Teodolinda. “Inferno 15: Winners and Losers in the Race of Life.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2018. https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-15.

112

Dante uses the figure of the tailor to signal recognition and reunion, Boccaccio invokes the same figure in service of disguise and escape. We recall Zinevra’s active role in transforming her identity by cross-dressing and tailoring the clothes to her body in

Decameron 2.9. The social instability of the tailor, a specifically Florentine attribute, is what allows the role to be co-opted by these two authors to such opposing literary purposes.

Dante’s second and final instance of sartore belongs to a context where it is paired with scissors in Paradiso 32. A tailor’s toolbox was rather simple and typically included needles, scissors, and measuring sticks.223 Along with female hosiers, tailors were one of the few categories of textile workers who typically owned their own tools.

Dante makes two allusions to scissors, one implicit and one explicit.224 The implicit allusion is paired with the only other instance of sartore in the Commedia in Paradiso 32.

The explicit allusion occurs in the Heaven of Mars in Paradiso 16. Both powerfully implicate time and space.

In the Heaven of Mars, Dante uses le force to illustrate the destructive power of time:

Ben se’ tu manto che tosto raccorce: sì che, se non s'appon di dì in die, lo tempo va dintorno con le force.

You are indeed a cloak that soon wears out, so that if, day by day, we add no patch, then circling time will trim you with its shears (Paradiso 16.7-9)

223 [Frick 101(n45)].

224 Dante also refers to cutting garments in his characterization of hoods worn by hypocrites: “de la taglia / che in Clugnì per li monaci fassi” (of that same cut / that’s used to make the clothes for Cluny’s monks [Inf. 23.62-63]).

113

Here Dante communicates the weighty idea that the quest to maintain nobility and in some sense all human endeavors is eventually doomed by linking two textile metaphors: the first based on the finite lifespan of a cloak and the second on the conclusive nature of cutting.225 By likening an idea or a person to a cloak, Dante signals the relationship between bodies and textiles, underscored by the many comparisons of flesh to clothing, and prompts the reader to consider the ways in which bodies, particularly as they have been positioned in the text, behave like clothing; they are constructed by a Maker, made of organic materials, and most poignantly in this passage they are destined to wear out over time. Surely, the concern about what happens to our bodies in the afterlife is triggered by the caveat of repair. Patching the cloak that is frayed by time suggests maintenance and gestures towards a secondary textile economy.226 The comparison reminds the reader that even goods have a second life or an afterlife as it amplifies concerns about the role of the body post-mortality. Lo tempo, qualified by va dintorno, literally “goes around,” highlights the cyclical nature of how we experience time. The repetition of seasons and patterns of day and night, specifically signaled by di in die, exemplify this model. Circling time also theorizes a visual representation that mirrors the structure of the cosmos. Dante constructs the universe of the text as a series of rings: the

225 Dante continues an exploration of the finality of all human endeavors in this canto: poscia che le cittadi termine hanno. Le vostre cose tutte hanno lor morte, sì come voi; in that—since even cities meet their end. All things that you possess, possess their death, just as you do; (Paradiso 16.78-80)

226 The secondary textile economy is evoked in Decameron 8.2 with the repair of spinning wheel and also the character of Lotto, the rigattiere, or old clothes merchant. See Boccaccio section below. 114

nine circles of Inferno, seven terraces of Purgatorio, and nine spheres of Paradiso.

Moreover, the concept of time paired with the act of cutting evokes the three Fates of

Greek mythology: while in the distaff passage of Purgatorio 21 we met Clotho, here

Dante evokes Atropos, who cuts the thread of life. In his exposition of this terzina,

Jacopo della Lana identified three common scenarios for cutting with shears or scissors, pairing two with corollary professions. He lists cutting a cloth by a tailor, cutting iron, and cutting hair by a barber. Jacopo did not identify a work role associated with cutting iron, but we could easily pair laborer, metalworker or metallurgist with this task. All three potential roles imply artisanal positions in the social work hierarchy along with tailor and barber listed by Jacopo. Artisanal practice as represented by both the patch and shears are shown to have both destructive and reparative capabilities.

Diverging from Dante’s narrowing depiction of time, which trims with its scissors in Paradiso 16, the tailor passage in Paradiso 32 portrays an expansive and advancing depiction of time taking flight. This passage is often cited in critical debate over the

Commedia’s vision status.227 Dante communicates the idea that a full stop in time is necessary and ordered by using the example of the way a tailor cuts cloth:

Ma perché ’l tempo fugge che t’assonna, qui farem punto, come buon sartore che com’ elli ha del panno fa la gonna;

But time, which brings you sleep, takes flight, and now we shall stop here—even as a good tailor who cuts the garment as his cloth allows— (Paradiso 32.139-141)

The passing of time, particularly the time of this experience, is compared to the finite nature of cloth in garment production, restricting the tailor’s actions. Recall that, while

227 Barolini, Teodolinda. The Undivine Comedy:Detheologizing Dante. Princeton University Press, 1992, 144-147. 115

time only exists in Purgatorio (both Inferno and Paradiso are eternal), Dante-pilgrim’s own journey through the three realms of the afterlife unfolds in time. This simile capitalizes on an intuitive understanding of the agency of the raw material, del panno, curbing to some degree what the artisan or tailor can enact upon it to create la gonna.

Lehman refers to this property as a material’s affordances. A tailor, even a master-tailor, cannot cut infinite pieces from finite cloth. There is a limitation in our world on material goods replaced with the infinite nature of spiritual goods in Paradiso where everyone desires and wants only what they have.228 This symbiotic affiliation is reflective of the synergy between material and maker. Dante stages various epistemologies throughout his text. A tacit understanding of the relationship between artisan and materials is an example of a craft way of knowing and stands in contrast to more didactic knowledge systems with the paradigm of the maker, Fattore, as all-powerful and the material as completely acceding. The metaphor of the affordance of the cloth contained in this tercet helps to explain the forced nature of the halt in the journey and provides a link between a spiritual destination where wants and needs are completely fulfilled and our terrestrial existence governed so much by limitation and lack. In some ways the metaphor here is

228 When asked about her happiness Piccarda responds: «Frate, la nostra volontà quïeta virtù di carità, che fa volerne sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta.

“Brother, the power of love appeases our will so—we only long for what we have; we do not thirst for greater blessedness. (Paradiso 3. 70-72)

116

ontological.229 It provides a conduit to quantify the non-physical, to understand time as existing like an entity or substance.

Returning our focus once again to the cruna, or needle’s eye, Dante uses the term to describe the tightness of the pass up the mountain on the first terrace of Purgatorio, the terrace of pride, explaining “che noi fossimo fuor di quella cruna” (we made our way through that needle’s eye [Purg.10.16]). This confirms the cruna as a familiar reference point for his audience but it also subtly mirrors the tripartite way in which Dante deploys hem: as technique, as geographic metaphor, and as reference to the relationship between reading and writing. In Purgatorio 21, Dante embeds the action of needle-threading into a metaphor about desire for knowledge:

Sì mi diè, dimandando, per la cruna del mio disio, che pur con la speranza si fece la mia sete men digiuna.

His question threaded so the needle’s eye of my desire that just the hope alone of knowing left my thirst more satisfied. (Purgatorio 21.37-39)

Here Dante desires the answer to Virgil’s question to Statius about the earthquake and why the mountain shook. Essentially, he wants to know the cause of things. Cruna contributes a deep sense of acuity to this epistemological desire because of the mechanics of the tool and the complexity and intricacy of trying to hit a target. The connotations of perception and precision involved in threading a needle evoke hand-eye coordination.

Because it is followed immediately by the corporeal metaphor of satiated thirst, this pairing draws attention to the close relationship between tool and the body of the artisan.

229 Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 25.

117

The question enflames desire, but hope satisfies it. Deriving satisfaction from hope rather than a definitive answer privileges the pursuit of knowledge and experimentation as the destination.

2.3.2.2 Sewing

Threading a needle is the first and necessary preparatory step in the act of sewing.

While sewing can be deduced and inferred from the many references to finished textile objects found in the Commedia, the act of sewing is most explicitly performed on the terrace of envy in Purgatorio 13 where the sinners’ eyelids are sewn shut:

ché a tutti un fil di ferro i cigli fóra e cusce sì, come a sparvier selvaggio si fa però che queto non dimora.

for iron wire pierces and sews up the lids of all those shades, as untamed hawks are handled, lest, too restless, they fly off. (Purgatorio 13. 70-72)

In this vivid and gruesome act of stitching, iron wire replaces wool or silk thread.

The example of falconry reminds us that the purpose of this punishment is to contain and limit the shades’gaze. Each detail, from the color and construction of their cloaks to the mechanism of their contrapsso is about purging their envy. The color of the cloaks, “con manti al color de la pietra,” avows both the economical costs and lack of artiface communicated by un-dyed fabric.230 Horsehair — “di vil ciliccio mi parean coperti” —as a raw material is undoubtedly, cheap, rough, and uncomfortable.231 To purge their envy, grief must be expressed through forced tears:

230 Purgatorio 13.48.

231 Purgatorio 13.71.

118

da l’altra parte m’eran le divote ombre, che per l’orribile costura premevan sì, che bagnavan le gote

and to my other side were the devout shades; through their eyes, sewn so atrociously, those spirits forced the tears that bathed their cheeks. (Purgatorio 13.82-84)

A close examination of the site of tear expression reveals deeper bodily textile connections. Torquato Tasso notes the marginale aspect of the word, costura, or seam.232

Baldassare Lombardi interpreted orribile not as crude but frightening.233 In his footsteps,

Paolo Costa defined it as la spaventevole cucitura, a frightening seam.234 This is well illustrated in Luigi Bennassuti’s description of the eyelashes as the location where two pieces are sewn together.235 I prefer Longfellow’s translation of per l’orribile costura as

“through the horrible seam” because it intentionally blurs the boundary between body and textile, temporarily figuring the eyelids into two pieces of cloth.

The unstated yet implied eyelashes along the seam recall another moment in this canto in which unexpected materials substitute for more familiar ones, in the cloaks made of coarse horsehairs. Petra Lange-Berndt notes “sewing should bring closure.”236 But the closure in this instance remains porous as the tears breach the seam. At first glance, this

232 Cited from the commentary to Purgatorio 13.82-84 by Torquato Tasso, (Pisa: Co' Caratteri di F. Didot, 1830), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

233 Cited from the commentary to Purgatorio 13.82-84 by Baldassare Lombardi, (Roma: A. Fulgoni, 1791), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

234 Cited from the commentary to Purgatorio 13.82-84 by Paolo Costa, (Firenze, Fabris, 1840), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

235 Benassuti writes: “È la linea di congiunzione di due parti cucite insieme. Queste due parti erano le ciglia.” Cited from the commentary to Purgatorio 13.82-84 by Luigi Benassuti, (Verona: G. Civelli, 184), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

236 Lange-Berndt, Petra. “Sewing.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed.Anika Reineke, (Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017), 221-224.

119

may appear ineffectual until one considers the intention of the forced tears as a device of purgation. According to Lange-Berndt, the term “sewing” refers to several things at once, including the action and the item being sewn. In this way she insists, sewing is connected to the arts, crafts, and everyday practices of needlework, surgery and various rituals with their related material culture of pins, thimbles, scissors, tape measures, patterns, threads, fabrics, hides or skins.237 Lange-Berndt observes clothing as our second skin and as an interface between public and private adding “the dermis itself can also be sewn.”238

The overlap between textiles and surgery spans both tools and procedures. It situates the body as clothing, ascribing a material signifier to the concept, rampant throughout culture and text, of flesh as the body’s clothing. After exploring the etymological root of texere, Berndt suggests that the “cultural complex of sewing denotes the act of adding to or interfering with narrations on a material level.”239 In this way sewing is similar to spinning. Berndt notes the anonymity inherent in the practice of domestic sewing as well as sewing’s association with education to femininity, the duties of a housewife, the chaste needlework of Virgin Mary or “the threats posed by the passive, vain, or even seductive needlewomen.”240 On the last point, Madonna Sismunda of Decameron 7.8, masks her infidelity by awaiting the return of her husband and family by sewing. The role of the female seamstress provides a safe space in which to hide after

237 Ibid., 221.

238 Ibid., 221-224.

239 Ibid., 221.

240 Ibid., 221.

120

committing her transgression. Thus she performs a spectacle of domestic sewing that contrasts with and undermines her husband’s account of her infidelity.241

2.3.3 The Hem

On the derivation of hem in contrast to seam, Baert explains, “The Indo-European root (hem) is kem-, meaning (to press, squeeze), while (seam) derives from siuyô, meaning (I sew) (Grimm 1854-1961, 14:1905).”242 The etymological connections to the idea of pressing or squeezing resonate deeply with Dante’s use of lembo in Inferno 15 to refer to his own clothing’s hem, as grasped at by one of the shades. In contemporary parlance, the margin can refer to both a space from which to reject or be rejected by the mainstream; in other words a place where one can critique the center. Margins and border spaces can alternately function as a gate for keeping people or ideas out and/or as a means of containment, holding people or ideas in. On the hem technique, David Ganz writes: “In Deleuze’s (1993 [1988]) thinking, it is exactly the continuity of recto and verso that makes the fold such a strong figure of mediation between opposite terms.”243

Paradoxically, the hem can communicate both rupture and continuity. A consideration of the material fold in Deluezian terms of continuity and break can aid our exploration of

241 E come la fante nella sua camera rimessa ebbe, cosí prestamente il letto della sua rifece e quella tutta racconciò e rimise in ordine, come se quella notte niuna persona giaciuta vi fosse, e raccese la lampana e sé rivestí e racconciò, come se ancora a letto non si fosse andata; e accesa una lucerna e presi suoi panni, in capo della scala si pose a sedere, e cominciò a cucire e a aspettare quello a che il fatto dovesse riuscire.

The maid thus bestowed in her room, the lady presently hied her back to her own, which she set all in neat and trim order, remaking the bed, so that it might appear as if it had not been slept in, relighting the lamp, and dressing and tiring herself, until she looked as if she had not been abed that night; then, taking with her a lighted lamp and some work, she sat her down at the head of the stairs, and began sewing, while she waited to see how the affair would end. (Decameron 7.8.23)

242 Baert, Barbara. “Hem.” Textile Terms: A Glossary. Ed.Anika Reineke, Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 141-144.

243 Ganz, David. “Recto/Verso.” Textile terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. (Emsdetten : Edition Imorde, 2017), 197.

121

Dante’s development and deployment of terminology for hem and margin. Throughout the Commedia, Dante uses four (4) different terms — lembo, margini, orlo, and vivagno

— seventeen (17) times throughout the Commedia to invoke the concept of a hem, edge, or border (see chart 1).

Lexicon

Margine/Margini [3]

Orlo/Orli [7]

Lembo [3] Instances

Vivagni [4]

0 2 4 6 8 Chart 1 Hem Lexicon.

With each deployment he privileges certain values and and obscures other; two instances refer overtly to textiles, thirteen to the topography of the landscape, one to time, and one to the margins of a text. In some instances, Dante appears to be pioneering a particular usage of the term in the Italian literary tradition, while in others there is evidence he is drawing on diverse literary, mathematical, and municipal documents in circulation at the time (see chart 2).

122

Usage in the Commedia

Geographic [13] Textile [2] Time [1] Text [1]

Chart 2 Hem Meaning.

2.3.3.1 Lembo

Lembo occurs three times in the Commedia. It is the sole term Dante uses to refer explicitely to the edge of a garment, reflecting the primary definition of lembo in the vernacular.244 Prior to Dante’s Inferno, there are two usages of lembo in the Italian tradition, one literary and one municipal. Duecento Florentine poet Monte Andrea da

Firenze’s uses the term once in his Rime. Next and fairly contemporary to Dante’s writing of Inferno, from 1309, lembo appears in a Sienese statute policing men’s

244 “Estremità inferiore della veste o di altro indumento, spesso rinforzata da una striscia di tessuto o di pelliccia.” See “Lèmbo.” Tesoro della lingua italiana delle Origini. http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO. Accessed 15 September 2019.

123

decorative hems.”245 Dante’s first use of lembo, in Inferno 15, constitutes the third historical usage of the term. Dante situates this passage after the famous simile of the tailor and in the moment that Dante-pilgrim is approached by the trio of shades from

Florence.

Così adocchiato da cotal famiglia, fui conosciuto da un, che mi prese per lo lembo e gridò: «Qual maraviglia!».

And when that family looked harder, I was recognized by one, who took me by the hem and cried out: “This is marvelous!” (Inferno 15.22-25)

The hem in the above passage is not only visually observed but also physically grasped; the shade uses his hand as tool of prehension to apprehend Dante’s identity and corporeal presence. In a realm with an obsessive focus on bodies and their materiality (do they have weight? can they physically impact the topography of hell?) the need to physically engage with the fabric mirrors our own reaction with material that is visually appealing. We reach out and touch it. And with that touch, countless neurons begin firing, sending signals to our brain regarding the fabric’s tactile attributes and perhaps clues to its composition. Is it smooth, rough, lightweight, heavy? How does it drape? While squinting through the eye of the cruna sparks the recognition between Brunetto Latini and Dante-pilgrim, it is the tactile engagement with the fabric’s hem that seals it. It is in this moment of physical connection via material that the recognition scene truly occurs.

This should come as no surprise considering one of the hem’s aesthetic functions, communicating information about identity. While the primary purpose of a hem is to tack

245 According to TLIO, the Costitutio del commune di Siena notes: “et li uomini possano fregiare le pelli a la spadiera [[...]] et possano ancora fregiare il lembi de la pelle. See “Lèmbo.” Tesoro della lingua italiana delle Origini. http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO. Accessed 15 September 2019. 124

up and contain the end of a cloak or gown, in practice, the hem often communicates information about status and wealth. Frick describes the borders of garments as scenes of masculine displays of opulence, writing about the “visual drama of dragging valuable fabrics along the ground.”246 Various techniques applied to the hem could increase the value and enhance the appearance of a garment from stamping gold or silver onto a fabric and sewing ribbons with gold or silver thread to attaching fur.247 Due to the gendered nature of sumptuary restrictions (in contrast to the example above this legislation focused mainly on policing women’s clothing), these sumptuous modifications became primarily associated with men. While we are sadly not given any details by Dante regarding the particular style, the physicsl hem of Dante-pilgrim’s garment is invoked again in

Purgatorio 27. In this scene Dante re-fashions the veracity test from Inferno 15, where identity was in the balance, into a test where truth claims are at stake.

E se tu forse credi ch’io t’inganni, fatti ver’ lei, e fatti far credenza con le tue mani al lembo d’i tuoi panni.

And if you think I am deceiving you, draw closer to the flames, let your own hands try out, within the fire, your clothing’s hem- (Purgatorio 27.30)

Dante-author shifts the physical interaction from between Brunetto’s hand and the pilgrim’s hem to potentially Dante-pilgrim’s own hand and hem into the fire. Despite the deep relationship that has developed between Dante-pilgrim and his faithful guide,

Virgilio’s invitation to Dante to walk through the purifying flames requires such a radical

246 Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 45.

247 Stuard, Susan Mosher. Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy. Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, 44. 125

degree of trust that he suggests Dante-pilgrim test out the flames with the hem of his garment to provide some reassuring evidence regarding his divinely sanctioned and narratively pre-determined safety. The lembo in this case functions as the external limit of

Dante’s body-habitus. It demarcates the exterior boundaries of his body-ecosystem with the environment and at this intersection Dante locates an opportunity for un-doing all of the deception inherent in human life. The fires of purgation will cleanse him of all sin, allowing him to progress through the heavens on the next part of his journey.

But the inclusion of the verb t’inganni in this passage creates a tension between the promised purity and truth that lies ahead, and the deception present everywhere else.

From a material perspective, as a larger category clothing often conceals and tricks, and hems in particular can be engineered to deceive. This is evident in the historical and contemporary practice of using more expensive materials and techniques on only the visible part of a hem, implying the entire garment is lined in the same elaborate manner.

Further, on garment hems Stuard observes that,“A heavy border that caused a garment to sway in a stately fashion as a man walked enhanced his fine, extravagantly cut garment through falling to the ground in deep voluminous folds.” 248 A Deleuzian consideration of the dualistic nature of folds brings our attention to the danger of porosity at this border site as well as the necessity of the threat of trickery in a scene about trust and border crossing; these oppositions buttress one another and are indelibly connected. Lastly, the articulation of “le tue mani” stresses the ongoing interaction between clothes and the body, in production, assessment, and consumption. The corporeal interaction with the

248 Ibid., 44.

126

hem, specifically the physical movement of bringing the material to the body is pivotal to both the lembo of Inferno 15 and the lembo in Purgatorio 27.

In contrast to the first and third instances of lembo, Dante’s second instance of lembo describes the topography of Purgatorio.

Tra erto e piano era un sentiero schembo, che ne condusse in fianco de la lacca, là dove più ch’a mezzo muore il lembo.

There was a slanting path, now steep, now flat; it led us to a point beside the valley, just where its bordering edge had dropped by half. (Purgatorio 7.70–73)

Dante pioneers this particular definition. The lembo in Purgatorio 7 is the first recorded in the Italian tradition to express the concept of an edge, border, or brink.249

Following Dante, lembo appears in texts by authors of various commenti on the

Commedia, Boccaccio, and Petrarch expressing a topographical meaning. Dante’s usage draws attention to the relationship between the characters and their environment. The height differential of the landscape changes as they move up the moutain of Purgatory.

The contrast between steep and flat beside a valley suggest a concavity to the surface of the terrain.250 Additionally, a veritable treasure trove of material objects follows this tercet. Dante enumerates objects that would pale in comparison to the grass in the valley, listing precious metals, expensive dyes, and jewels.

249 This correlates with the second definition found in TLIO, “Orlo di un pendio, ciglio.” See “Lèmbo.” Tesoro della lingua italiana delle Origini. http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO. Accessed 15 September 2019.

250 Bernard Bischoff describes how most manuscripts were made of parchment in medieval Europe. On the dual sidedness in parchment he observes the curvature allows for differentiation, noting: “the flesh side is convex, while the less stretchable hair-side in concave.” See Bischoff, Bernard. Latin Paleography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Translated by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and David Ganz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 8.

127

Oro e argento fine, cocco e biacca, indaco, legno lucido e sereno, fresco smeraldo in l’ora che si fiacca,

Gold and fine silver, cochineal, white lead, and Indian lychnite, highly polished, bright, fresh emerald at the moment it is dampened, (Purgatorio 7.73-75)

In addition to recalling the courtly love poetry of Guinnizzelli, the list of precious items is closely aligned with the materials of luxury textile production and the mimetic aesthetics of finished textiles. The inclusion of cochineal in this list both attests to its value and specifically points to the dyeing process of luxury textiles, just as gold and silver were hammered to coat silk threads. With this language, Dante reinforces the textile-valences entrenched in the term lembo. Immediately following the catalogue of precious objects, Dante depicts nature as a painter,“Non avea pur natura ivi dipinto”

(And nature there not only was a painter. [Purg. 7.79]). Dante highlights the concept of production by placing the textile related word, lembo, in a sequence followed by expensive raw materials used in textile applications and ending with a depiction of nature as a craftsperson. Lembo functions here primarily as a geographical periphrasis, bringing together textile-adjacent raw materials, labor, technique, and luxury as a context.

While, Dante uses lembo to refer directly to textiles within the economy of the text, he also uses it to describe topography.

2.3.3.2 Margini

Dante uses a different term, margini, three times to refer to the topography of

Hell. The first instance draws attention to the height differential between the edges of the path between two circles, the second captilizes on the implicit sense of protection

128

communicated by a border (keeping the fire a safe distance from Dante-pilgrim and

Virgilio), and the third more generally reiterates a boundary valence. In fact, Dante is the first person to use margini with this meaning in the Italian tradition, followed by commentators on his work and then Boccaccio, who uses it in his Esposizioni. Thus the second definition in TLIO for margini as an edge or border is entirely Dante-driven, much like the second definition of lembo. Yet Dante also manages to exploit the primary contemporaneous definition of margine, as a wound or a scar, with his placement of margini in the final tercet of canto 14 and the initial tercet of canto 15. Both instances are situated in direct discourse and refer to the physical topography of Hell (see table 3).

Poi disse: «Omai è tempo da scostarsi dal bosco; fa che di retro a me vegne: li margini fan via, che non son arsi,

Margini Then he declared: “The time has come to quit (Inferno 14.139-141) this wood; see that you follow close behind me; these margins form a path that does not scorch,

Ora cen porta l’un de’ duri margini e ’l fummo del ruscel di sopra aduggia, sì che dal foco salva l’acqua e li argini. Margini (Inferno 15.1-3) Now one of the hard borders bears us forward; the river mist forms shadows overhead and shields the shores and water from the fire.

Table 3 Language performing a seam.

In the first, the margins physically direct and guide Dante and Virgilio on their path and form an impenetrable border protecting them from the fire.251 Virgil instructs Dante to follow close behind, imitating the same action expressed through a colloquial use of panni in Inferno 15: “Però va oltre: i’ ti verrò a’ panni” (Therefore move on; below—but

251 Margini appears once earlier in this canto in Inferno 14.82-84. 129

close—I’ll follow [Inf. 15.40]). In the second deployment, Dante manages to exploit almost every meaning of polyvalent margine. Could Dante’s utilization of margins to form a path in his text allude to the guidance and consolation of literature? The margini that open Inferno 15 are characterized by the adjective duri: That hardness is immediately contrasted with the mist and shadows all around, perhaps hinting at the potential porosity of borders, and undermining the implication of safety given to their path just lines ago.

This tercet is followed immediately by a reference to Bruge and other cities renowned for wool production, hinting at a textile connection. The balanced nature of these two uses of margin in terms of their content and form mimic the way two pieces of cloth or pages or flesh can be stitched or bound together. With the quick succession and repetition, Dante makes the term margini textually perform a seam between the two canti, privileging the repair aspect inherent in the scar definition. There are examples of margini referring to wounds and scars in early Trecento Florentine medical documents and in the case of

Florentine legends referring specifically to the stigmata of the crucifixion.252 With margini, Dante pulls from diverse interdisciplinary categories in his novel placement of the term, while expanding the meaning and definition of the term with his discrete uses.

2.3.3.3 Orlo

Of the seven instances of orlo/orli, in the Commedia, six refer to topography in the tradition of lembo and margini as explicated above, and one refers to time. The first recorded use of the term orlo in the Italian tradition appears in a mathematical treatise by

Jacopo da Firenze in 1307 referring to the external margin of a surface or portion of

252 See “Orlo.” Tesoro della lingua italiana delle Origini. http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO. Accessed 15 September 2019.

130

space.253 Jacopo’s Tractatus algorismi contains the earliest extant algebra in a European vernacular and probably, as has been argued, the first algebra in vernacular Italian.254

Analysis by Simi shows that because it descends neither from algebras written in Latin nor Arabic it must build on an already existing Romance-speaking environment engaged in algebra. This portends interesting possibilities in terms of Dante’s reading material.

In the Constitution of the Commune of Siena of 1309, orlo to refer to an external border, specifically in reference to making tile. The author insists that it have a good edge.255 In contrast to the hardness of tile and in an instance that guides subsequent usage, Dante uses the term orlo to refer to the outer margin of a body of water, riva, in Inferno 22.25.

It is not until we arrive at the third sub-definition that we find the internal privileged over the external. Orlo can be used to describe an upper margin that defines the interior and used to measure the goods contained therein. It is for this purpose that a nun, suor

Chiaruccia, used the term orlo in her fourteenth century letter to a frate Giovanni in which she wrote, “Apresso ti pregho che tutte mi prochacci parechie belle schudelle bologniese, e siano bellissime e non abbiano orlo largho e siano piciole da mangiarvi dentro” (I beg you to send me some Bolognese bowls, that will be beautiful and have not too wide a rim/hem and are small [enough] to eat inside.) 256 Her letter alludes to the containment valence in circulation at the time. Containment also draws our focus from

253 TLIO provides the following definition: “margine esterno di una superficie o di una porzione di spazio.” See “Orlo.” Tesoro della lingua italiana delle Origini. http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO. Accessed 15 September 2019.

254 Simi, Annalisa. Trascrizione ed analisi del manoscritto Ricc. 2236 della Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze, Siena, Università degli Studi di Siena, settembre 1995 (Rapporto Matematico n° 287).

255 See “Orlo.” Tesoro della lingua italiana delle Origini. http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO. Accessed 15 September 2019.

256 “Lettera di suor Chiaruccia a frate Giovanni.” Ornella Castellani Pollidori, Suor Chiaruccia a frate Giovanni, Studi linguistici italiani, II, 1961, 163-68.

131

the outside to the inside and the liminal space between. Dante’s fourth use of orlo occurs in Inferno 34 in the moment that Dante and Virgilio climb past Lucifer’s body.

Poi uscì fuor per lo fóro d’un sasso e puose me in su l’orlo a sedere; appresso porse a me l’accorto passo.

Then he slipped through a crevice in a rock and placed me on the edge of it, to sit; that done, he climbed toward me with steady steps. Inferno 85-87

Orlo refers to the edge of the rock where Virgilio temporarily deposits Dante. It is from that locus that Dante experiences the inversion that will lead him out of Hell. What was below is now above. Expecting to see one half of Lucifer, he sees the other. The use of orlo exploits both the external and containment valences embedded in orlo. Passing this border, Dante transitions out of containment. After climbing upside down, our two protagonists finally become both physically and in the case of Dante, spiritually, more upright as they pass the axis and approach the boundary leaving Inferno and heading towards the mountain of Purgatorio. Metaphor smooths over the ruptures in continuity here because the edge in orlo can be both a point of continuity in his journey and a rupture between realms.

On the terrace of pride, where Dante-author famously wrestles with his own ego,

Dante-pilgrim inquires about how Purgatorio works.

E io: «Se quello spirito ch’attende, pria che si penta, l’orlo de la vita, qua giù dimora e qua sù non ascende,

se buona orazïon lui non aita, prima che passi tempo quanto visse, come fu la venuta lui largita?».

132

And I: “But if a spirit who awaits the edge of life before repenting must- unless good prayers help him-stay below

and not ascend here for as long a time as he had spent alive, do tell me how Salvani’s entry here has been allowed.” Purgatorio. 11 127-132

Dante is the first person to use orlo to delineate the edge of time. On entity and substance metaphors, Lakoff and Johnson observe that when things are not clearly discrete or bounded, we still categorize them as such. Such ways of viewing physical phenomena are needed to satisfy certain purposes that we have; locating mountains, meeting at street corners, trimming hedges. Human purposes typically require us to impose artificial boundaries that make physical phenomena discrete just as we are: entities bounded by a surface.257 Instead of quantifying physical boundaries, as he does with each of the six other instances of orlo, here Dante applies the metaphorical model to a temporal quantification figuring the end of life as a border.

2.3.3.4 Vivagno

Vivagno/vivagni is the only hem/border term present in all three cantiche. Three of the four references are topographical in nature, and one, the only located in Paradiso, is paratextual. The primary definition of vivagno in the Italian definition, as a selvage or border of a fabric, slightly post-dates Dante. The earliest appearance, with that meaning, occurs in a Florentine statue from the 1330s and in a merchant handbook shortly thereafter. Recall, hem and selvage have slightly different connotations, while hem often points to the edge of a garment, selvage typically refers to the edge of the fabric before it

257 Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, 24.

133

has been removed from the loom. Thus, tailors construct hems and weavers create selvages. The primary function of a selvage, to keep a cloth from unraveling, centers on containment. Because of provenance identifying capabilities, in practice, the selvage became a site for quality control measures. The color of a selvage and/or the color of a specific thread incorporated into a selvage could communicate multiple data points about the cloth as a whole, including the quality of dye, the number of thread counts, and in some cases even the identity of a specific weaver.258 Practices designed to ensure high quality could also be exploited to deceive. Selvage customs formed no exception to criminal ingenuity.259

The second meaning of vivagno, as an outer margin, is governed entirely by

Dante’s usage in the Commedia specifically as an outer margin of a circle of Inferno or

Purgatorio. The reader first encounters Dante’s use of vivagno as a topographical reference in Inferno 23:

Non corse mai sì tosto acqua per doccia a volger ruota di molin terragno, quand’ ella più verso le pale approccia,

come ’l maestro mio per quel vivagno, portandosene me sovra ’l suo petto, come suo figlio, non come compagno.

No water ever ran so fast along a sluice to turn the wheels of a land mill, not even when its flow approached the paddles,

as did my master race down that embankment while bearing me with him upon his chest, just like a son, and not like a companion. (Inferno 23.46-51)

258 Similar to a trademark.

259 Several deceptive practices related to selvages are explored in chapter three. 134

The vivagno marks a space between, in this case, two different heights of ground creating a steep incline. Dante’s use of vivagno in this passage privileges the structural function of the vivagno in a piece of fabric, the prevention of unraveling. The focus on this technique of production is amplified by the references to craft production that dominate this section of the text. Ruota, molin terragno, and le pale are all tools or types of technology used in multiple craft applications including leather and textile production.

As Virgilio navigates the edge of the embankment carrying Dante-pilgrim on his chest,

Dante-poet compares him to water-power and parent, emphasizing mechanical efficiency and emotive care. The intimate and affectionate language, reminiscent of the scene with

Brunetto, becomes more intense, imbued with familial terminology. Dante describes how he rests his body on Virgilio’s chest in the fashion of a son and not a companion. This simile evokes the earlier moment in this canto when Virgilio grabs Dante the way a mother grabs a son to rescue him from a fire. The urgency of that situation is communicated via the shorthand of the mother’s clothing. She dresses in only a shift, camiscia, due to the impending emergency and speed with which they must move and escape.

The next use of vivagno occurs in Purgatorio 24, where Dante famously stages his own historiography of the lyric tradition.260 Similar to the margini, in Inferno 14, these vivagni delineate the path:

Sì accostati a l’un d’i due vivagni passammo, udendo colpe de la gola seguite già da miseri guadagni.

260 See Barolini, Teodolinda. “Purgatorio 24: Making Literary History.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2017. digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine- comedy/purgatorio/purgatorio-24.

135

So, keeping close to one of that road’s margins, we moved ahead, hearing of gluttony- its sins repaid by sorry penalties. (Purgatorio 24.127-130)

Here the term vivagni could gesture towards the elaborate vivagni on garments; gluttony transcribed into a sartorial context. Next, Dante continues to develop the craft language to express the intensity of the heat, writing: “e già mai non si videro in fornace / vetri o metalli sì lucenti e rossi” (no glass or metal ever seen within / a furnace was so glowing or so red [Purg. 24.137-138]). The furnace is a staple of many craft applications, particularly metal and glass-work. Within the context of the historiography of the Italian lyric embedded in this canto, Dante brings us from textile and general craft production to literary production. One subdefinition from TLIO, used only subsequently by Petrarch and not by Dante, uses vivagno to describe a sphere in Paradise. I believe that the internal logic that governs the starscape of Dante’s Paradiso no longer requires and in fact rejects the delimiting aspects of vivagno as a whole and thus the term is not used by

Dante to identify a particular sphere there. And yet the construct of narrative demands that the protagonists encounter borders and edges as markers of the progress on their journey. For this reason, Dante still applies vivagno to the description of the topography of the heavens.

Dante’s final use of vivagno, to refer to the margin of a book, constitutes the first location of this meaning in the Italian tradition. Dante writes:

Per questo l’Evangelio e i dottor magni son derelitti, e solo ai Decretali si studia, sì che pare a’ lor vivagni.

136

For this the Gospel and the great Doctors are forgotten, and only the Decretals are studied, as their margins show. (Paradiso 9.133-135)

Dante laments the misplaced focus on the Decretals over the Gospels and cites their well-used margins as evidence of an overreliance on these texts. The emphasis on the their well worn nature directs our attention to the fact that the margins are a site of a reader’s engagement with a text. Margin space can be used to challenge, misdirect, or subvert from the primary text.261 Text and other markings in a margin can invert the traditional roles of author and reader, often turning the reader into temporary author or co-author of a portion of text.262 Dante focuses on the question of epistemology by citing three different sources of knowledge; the Gospel (l’Evangelio), the Western intellectual tradition (i dottor magni), and what I would argue in other places is a craft authority with the use of the term vivagni, demonstrating a physical, bodily engagement with knowledge as an inherent part of craft work. In two prior tercets, Dante refers to God as Fattore,

Maker, and uses the biblical-textile crossover language of sheep, lambs, and shepherd in preparation for connecting the metaphorical to the material. The margin space of a text can also be an invitation for ornamentation and artistic engagement. Monnas identifies a relationship between:

261 For more on the relationship between the center and the margin in medieval manuscripts see Bremmer, Rolf H., and Sarah Larratt Keefer, Eds. Signs on the Edge: Space, Text and Margin in Medieval Manuscripts. Leuven: Peeter’s Publishers, 2007. Margins are also where commentary occurs. For the Italian tradition, see Storey, Wayne H. Visual Poetics Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric. New York: Garland, 1993.

262 On the relationship between marginalia and a recipe in the sixteenth century French Manuscript BnF Ms. Fr. 640, Visco and Cataldo write: “Questions of authority and mediation are further complicated in the marginalia because the author is both reader and writer (and practitioner). This annotation reconstructs the recipe using both readings in order to explore the relationship between writer and reader of this manuscript as well as to inquire about the larger mystery of the author’s identity and profession.” See Visco, Julianna, and Emogene Cataldo. “Oyster Shells.” BnF Ms. Fr. 640 A Digital Critical Edition.

137

the fantastic animals and humorous elements in fourteenth-century silks and contemporary manuscript border decorations but notes. . . the only documentary proof of a connection between the two disciplines occurs in 1469, when a miniature painter, Pietro Guindaleri of Cremona (active until 1506) worked for the Gonzaga family of Mantua in the dual capacity of painting miniatures and supplying textile designs.263

While that example post-dates our authors, the relationship remains applicable. Referring to book culture and richly ornamented pages Kuchenbuch and Kleine observe; “This practice of painted textile patterns emerged within a culture that closely related textus

(text) to textum (textile).”264 Dante’s innovative usage of vivagno relies on this implicit connection.

12 10 8 6 Vivagni [4] 4 Lembo [3] 2 Orlo/Orli [7] 0 Margine/Margini [3]

Chart 3 Hem Frequency.

An examination of this terminology in aggregage across cantiche reveals a decrease from Inferno through Purgatorio to Paradiso from ten instances to six instances

263 Monnas, Lisa. Merchants, Princes, and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300- 1550. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 51.

264 Reineke, Anika. “Screen” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 216.

138

to one, respectively (see chart 3). I view the reduction of this otherwise expansive lexicon as a conscious choice to reflect the dissolving need for boundaries, demarcation, and separation as Dante approaches unity with the divine. In conclusion, let us return to the passage with which we began this investigation of craftsmanship, Inferno 20. This chapter has focused on the needle —a central part of handiwork, embroidery, sewing, and tailoring — and the spindle, an essential tool for spinning. Wedged between those two,

Dante inserts the tool that unequivocally indicates weaving, the shuttle. The making and un-making of cloth dominates my next chapter.

139

Chapter 3: (Un)Making Cloth: Becoming and Unbecoming

Poi che, tacendo, si mostrò spedita l’anima santa di metter la trama in quella tela ch’io le porsi ordita,

After that holy soul had, with his silence, showed he was freed from putting in the woof across the web whose warp I set for him, Paradiso 17.100-102

Centrally positioned in the list of tools in Inferno 20 and conspicuously absent from Boccaccio’s recapitulation of those tools in the proemio of the Decameron, the spuola, or shuttle, points exclusively to the practice of weaving. Weaving, in its most basic form, involves fastening warp threads under tight tension and using a tool, such as the spuola, to move a weft thread at a perpendicular angle over and under the warp. In the thirteenth century, in order to create a warp that was strong enough to withstand the tension of being stretched out on a horizontal loom, the yarn had to be first combed then spun on a drop spindle. Weft yarns, in contrast, were carded and spun on a spinning wheel. While the process was faster it resulted in a yarn that was too weak for a warp but strong enough for the weft.265 The over/under pattern fundamental to weaving is practically unlimited in its potential for complexity. It is both the supportive infrastructure for turning threads into cloth and the mechanism for the incorporation of design. Unlike embroidery techniques, which are added post-loom, a woven pattern must often be conceived of in advance because it forms the structure of the cloth. A woven

265 Once a strong warp and weaker weft are woven together, fulling and tenting are performed to strengthen and clean the cloth.

140

textile, like text, offers an opportunity to meditate on the relationship between form

(structure) and content (design).

In this chapter, I pair an examination of the historical practices of weaving with the textual commentary tradition to reveal additional sources of fraud embedded in

Dante’s comparison of Tartar cloths to Geryon’s skin. In addition to Tartar cloth as a primary exemplum of woven fabric in the Commedia, I explore additional moments in which Dante uses weaving to point to other modes of making, particularly making text.

Next, I consider wrapping as an intermediary process between the making and unmaking of cloth. Exploiting shared cultural knowledge about relics and reliquary customs,

Boccaccio continues to imitate and innovate on Dante, always subverting expectations and challenging the notion of categories. Finally, I scrutinize the accidental disintegration and purposeful destruction of cloth as portrayed in discrete moments of the text. Both authors use the trope of decay in their individual explorations of what it means to be human.

This chapter’s epigraph resides in the textile-rich Heaven of Mars. A trifecta of weaving terms–tela, ordit[o], and trama or web, warp, and weft–structure Cacciaguida and Dante’s interaction regarding his future exile. Dante’s questions about the prophecies he has encountered thus far in his journey prepare the loom by setting up the strong warp threads. Cacciaguida’s potential answers put in the woof or weft completing the foundational structure of the canvas: in other words, a narrative of Dante’s life. In this lovely passage, the warp and the weft form two parts of an unfinished cloth or incomplete dialogue between Dante and his ancestor, Cacciaguida. It is only through the phenomenon of his embodied journey that Dante-pilgrim can stand orthogonal to

141

Cacciaguida in this weaving matrix and be connected through it to both his past and his future.266 In a canto focused on writing and legacy, this metaphor reminds us that the narrative of Dante’s life is both his journey and the telling of his journey. Even with a planned pattern, weavers maintain the ability to alter the design. The components of a weaving system therefore provide a helpful rubric for wrestling with the ideas of destiny and transgression inherent in prophecy, particularly reflected in Dante’s unanswered questions. The same issues, framed negatively in Inferno 20 where prognostication was punished, are presented here in a more positive light.

In the Heaven of the Moon, Dante puts the shuttle to metaphorical usage in an illustration of neglected vows:

Così fec’ io con atto e con parola per apprender da lei qual fu la tela onde non trasse infino a co la spuola

So did I with act and with word, to learn from her what was the weave thru which she did not draw the shuttle to the end (Paradiso 3.94-96)

Here too, the work of the shuttle appears to remain incomplete. In this canto, two important female figures, Piccarda Donati and Empress Costanza, command the focus.

Their personal history as nuns, their lineages, and their relationships — for Costanza as

266 I use the term orthogonal here to invoke the right angles at which threads interlace in the process of weaving. Later in this canto, Dante uses the term tetragono to describe his own location/stance: dette mi fuor di mia vita futura parole gravi, avvegna ch’io mi senta ben tetragono ai colpi di ventura; about my future life were grievous words— although, against the blows of chance I feel myself as firmly planted as a cube. (Paradiso 17.22-24)

142

mother of Frederick the II, for Piccarda with Dante through her brother Forese Donati — figure prominently in their location in this heaven. For both women, the veil, vela for

Piccarda and benda for Costanza, is the primary signifier of the cloistered life in these passages.267 Yet they are not portrayed practicing any textile arts. Instead Dante deploys the spuola, near the conclusion of Piccarda’s arc and before Costanza’s story begins, to textually join the two narratives and communicate, with the metaphor of weaving, the narrative reason for their position in this heaven. Much like the thirst analogy in the

Cacciaguida scene, the spuola is preceded by an analogy about food satiety.268 Dante persistently pairs these descriptions of corporeal needs with textile moments. Even in

Paradiso the language used to communicate ideas is rooted in our embodied sensory experiences.

Piccarda’s vows, violently broken by her rapists/kidnappers, form the interrupted weave of her life. From a practical standpoint, if the shuttle does not bring the weft or

267 Barolini, Teodolinda. “‘Sotto Benda’: The Women of Dante’s Canzone ‘Doglia Mi Reca’ in the Light of Cecco d’Ascoli.” Dante Studies, no. 123, 2005, 83–88.

268 Hunger in Paradiso 3 and thirst in Paradiso 17 share similar functions:

Ma sì com’ elli avvien, s’un cibo sazia e d’un altro rimane ancor la gola, che quel si chere e di quel si ringrazia,

But just as, when our hunger has been sated with one food, we still long to taste the other— while thankful for the first, we crave the latter— (Paradiso 3.91-93) non perché nostra conoscenza cresca per tuo parlare, ma perché t’ausi a dir la sete, sì che l’uom ti mesca». not that we need to know what you’d reveal, but that you learn the way that would disclose your thirst, and you be quenched by what we pour.” (Paradiso 17.10-12)

143

woof to the end of a series of warps, the cloth unravels.269 Piccarda’s life, indeed seems to unravel when she is ripped from the convent against her will: “Iddio si sa qual poi mia vita fusi” (God knows what, after that, my life became [Par. 3.108]). This visual holds true in the case of the primary weft; it must travel from selvage to selvage. However, for techniques involving brocading, supplemental, and floating wefts, the movement of the weft is limited to the width of the area where it is required.270 If we think of Piccarda’s shuttle as carrying a supplemental weft, the design of her life is augmented rather than unraveled. The limitation on the movement of the supplemental warp to where it is required mirrors Piccarda’s perspective on the limited nature of her happiness. She experiences the fulfillment that she requires.271 Even though she resides in the slowest sphere of Paradiso, to be dissatisfied would be discordant with the will of God and so she is therefore satisfied.

Not all allusions to weaving in the Commedia are as explicit as those described above. Gestures towards weaving reside outside of direct cloth metaphors.272 In Inferno

269 This holds true for a primary weft. Fanelli defines a brocading weft, or trama di broccato, as: “An additional weft, introduced into a ground weave, the movement of which is limited to the width of the area where it is required, and which does not travel from selvage to selvage.” Fanelli, Rosalia Bonito. Five centuries of italian textiles: A selection from the Museo del Tessuto Prato. Prato: Cassa di Risparmi e Depositi di Prato, 1981, 342. This holds true for supplemental and floating wefts as well.

270 Fanelli, Rosalia Bonito. Five centuries of italian textiles: A selection from the Museo del Tessuto Prato. Prato: Cassa di Risparmi e Depositi di Prato, 1981, 342.

271 «Frate, la nostra volontà quïeta virtù di carità, che fa volerne sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta.

“Brother, the power of love appeases our will so—we only long for what we have; we do not thirst for greater blessedness. (Paradiso 3.70-72)

272 Another example occurs within the hierarchy of the rose. Dante describes a transverse row cutting across:

144

18, Dante describes the movements of the sinners as analogous to the traffic patterns of

Jubilee. One group of sinners walks in one direction and another group walks in the opposing direction, each skipping up their heels to avoid the whips of the demons:

Ahi come facean lor levar le berze a le prime percosse! già nessuno le seconde aspettava né le terze.

Ah, how their first strokes made those sinners lift their heels! Indeed no sinner waited for a second stroke to fall—or for a third. (Inferno 18.37)

The repetition and seriality of the sinners’ movements, raising their feet vertically up and down in a repeated pattern while moving forward horizontally in opposing directions, simulate the motions of the heddles while the shuttle moves back and forth across the loom. The heddles are a series of loops that separate the warp threads for the passage of the weft. To create the complex figurative motifs found in luxury cloths, a loom with a large number of heddles lifting warps is necessary. The transition from vertical to horizontal looms expanded the cloth size possibilities, complexity of design, and was a key factor in the transition from the home weaving of the earlier Middle Ages to the commercial weaving that dominated the Trecento.

3.1. Dante and Tartar Cloths

The most detailed and materially grounded description of a lavish finished cloth in the Commedia resides in a comparative description of a mythical beast’s skin. Halfway

E sappi che dal grado in giù che fiede a mezzo il tratto le due discrezioni, per nullo proprio merito si siede,"

And know that there, below the transverse row that cuts across the two divisions, sit souls who are there for merits not their own, (Paradiso 32.40-42)

145

through the first cantica of Dante’s Commedia, Dante-pilgrim finds himself on the outer edge of the seventh circle of Hell. The frightening beast, Geryon, who will provide transit to the eighth circle, has just arrived. Describing this symbol of fraud, Dante writes that he had the face of a man and the body of a serpent:

lo dosso e ’l petto e ambedue le coste dipinti avea di nodi e di rotelle.

Con più color, sommesse e sovraposte non fer mai drappi Tartari né Turchi, né fuor tai tele per Aragne imposte.

His back and chest as well as both his flanks had been adorned with twining knots and circlets.

No Turks or Tartars ever fashioned fabrics more colorful in background and relief, Nor had Arachne ever loomed such webs. (Inferno 17.14-18)

The Enciclopedia Dantesca defines this instance of drappi as fabric, usually silk but also wool or linen, highly valued in Dante’s time.273 Why Dante compares the skin of the beast to Tartar and Turkish cloth, rather than another medium of mimetic representation such as painting or sculpture, and what precisely the terms nodi, rotelle, sommesse, and sovraposte refer to have remained at the margins of scholarly interest.

While many scholars over the last seven hundred years have glossed this passage, primarily referring to its valence of fraud and/or possible conjectures at technique, in general their comments have been disparate and not in conversation with one another. By collapsing them over time, I am able to coalesce and examine the ideas by category, grouping together voices separated by time but joined in agreement over technique. As I

273 See Colicchi, Calogero. “Drappi.” treccani.it. Enciclopedia Dantesca, 1970. Web. 7 March 2018. and Bertuccioli, Giuliano. “Tartari.” treccani.it. Enciclopedia Dantesca, 1970. Web. 7 March 2018.

146

wrestle with the questions that commentators have posed regarding what techniques produced such stunning visual effects, I look to what each method contributes to our reading of this passage.

Tartar cloths began to arrive in Italy in the 1260s.274 While these typically plain or figured silks were woven in Mongolian territories, the motifs and patterns were a blend from Islamic, Central Asian, and Chinese origins. Jacoby notes that Tartar cloths were distinctly different from entirely Western or entirely Eastern fabrics and particularly trendy in the latter half of the Duecento throughout the Trecento.275 By 1265, the silk guilds were producing at least seven types of cloths, including gold-interwoven baudekyns, or Baghdadi silks imitating Islamic fabrics. By 1299, Turkish imitations and variations were exported under the name tartaires de Luques. Like scholars before and after, Paget Toynbee notes Tartar cloths were often synonymous with wealth and grandeur. The intense labor requirements for sericulture and the mysterious (to the West) origins made silk synonymous with purity, luxury, and exalted status.276 Houghteling observes, “thus while silk fabric became part of the iconography of royalty and luxury, the manufacture and materiality of silk was never far from consciousness in the medieval and the early modern world.”277

In his gloss of the passage, Boccaccio emphasizes the virtuosity of the maestri who created these types of cloths noting that neither a painter nor anyone else would be

274 Jacoby, David. “The Movement of Silk and Silk Textiles Italy and the Mediterranean in the 12th-14th centuries.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th century Florence. Wool, silk, painting, Ed. Cecilie Hillberg Florence: Giunti, 2017, 25.

275 Ibid.,25.

276 Houghteling, Sylvia. “Silk.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017. 226.

277 Ibid., 226. 147

able to make something similar or more beautiful.278 Certainly the concept of verisimilitude fits into Dante’s ongoing meditation on mimesis in the Commedia. It also queries the nature of the expertise of maestri and in what ways the high-quality raw materials and expert techniques and practices came together to produce such universally venerated fabrics. Olson cites the probability that Boccaccio saw the depiction of Tartar cloths in Simone Martini’s painting in the altar of St. Louis of Toulouse in Naples as a possible context for his above claim.279 Regarding the issue of skill, historian Sergio

Tognetti asserts that those “who worked the textiles to obtain clothes, cloaks, and liturgical vestments enriched with embroidery and friezes, had a skill that brought them closer to the realm of the masters of the figurative arts.”280 Tognetti’s recognition of the skill required of craftspersons is vital to understanding the development of the silk industry in Italy and the necessary of people whose ideas, skills, and tacit knowledge travel with them. The exclusion of textiles from the figurative arts also creates an historiographical challenge. Many textiles in fact reached both a level of aesthetic excellence and performed crucial representational functions.281

278 Boccaccio writes, “Con più color sommesse e sopraposte, a variazion dell'ornamento, Non fer mai drappi Tartari né Turchi, li quali di ciò sono ottimi maestri, sì come noi possiamo manifestamente vedere ne' drappi tartareschi, li quali veramente sono sì artificiosamente tessuti, che non è alcun dipintore che col pennello gli sapesse fare simiglianti, non che più belli.” Cited from the commentary on “Inferno, XVII.16-17” by Giovanni Boccaccio (Mondadori: Milano, 1965), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, https://Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

279 In Simone Martini’s painting, Olson locates the “earliest known depiction of an oriental pile carpet.” See Olson, Kristina M. “The Ethical and Sartorial Geography of the Far East: Tartar Textiles in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Esposizioni.” Le Tre Corone. Rivista internazionale di studi su Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio. VI (2019):125-139.

280 Tognetti, Sergio. “The Origins of the Arte della Seta.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence: Wool, Silk, Painting. Ed. Cecilie Hollberg. Florence: Giunti Editore S.p.A., 2017, 61.

281 Albers, Anne. On Weaving. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017, 50.

148

Toynbee concludes that Dante “was referring to objects perfectly familiar to his contemporaries, when he compared the painted skin of la sozza imagine di froda to the brilliant colouring of the drappi tartareschi.” 282 Valuable Lucchese and Mongolian silk cloths were in wide circulation. In addition to the representation of these cloths in painting, various scholars note the presence of Tartar cloths in papal inventories and the treasury of King Phillip of France. Olson suspects the practice of wearing panni tartarici by Boniface VIII and Clement V to have been a factor in Dante’s decision to use this type of cloth to communicate the idea of greed and corruption.283 The 1295 inventory of the papal treasury includes silks, whose cities of origin could not be identified, conclusively, by those logging them in.284 An inability to distinguish the origin of particular fabrics contributed to tighter quality control measures, as detailed below.

But perhaps one of the strongest associations between these cloths and fraud derives from Western European attitudes toward the East. Chiavacci Leonardi reminds us that fabrics from the East were known to Italians through Venetian merchants and fundamentally connected to the idea of fraudulence in the cultural imaginary.285 In his analysis of this passage, Singleton summarizes a prevalent late medieval Christian view of Turks and Tartars, one tinged with suspicion and what we might now call the fear of

282 Toynbee, Paget. Dante Studies and Researches. London: Methuen and Co., 1902, 115.

283 Olson, Kristina M. “The Ethical and Sartorial Geography of the Far East: Tartar Textiles in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Esposizioni,” Le Tre Corone. Rivista internazionale di studi su Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio VI (2019): 138.

284 The provenance is ascribed to Venice or Lucca. By 1308, there are statues in Lucca to make weavers adhere to specification in size and other attributes. These standards were typically specific to each city and incredibly important in identifying the geographic origins of textiles. See Jacoby, David. “The Movement of Silk and Silk Textiles Italy and the Mediterranean in the 12th-14th centuries.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th century Florence. Wool, silk, painting. Ed. Cecilie Hillberg. Florence: Giunti, 2017. 18-29.

285 Of course Venice is not the only location under scrutiny. Textile materials are circulating in and out of Florence from many places.

149

the Other.286 To support this view of implicit treachery, Singleton cites Dante’s characterization of mosques in the city of Dis in Inferno.287 Certainly this represents the primary way in which this passage has been interpreted. Apart from discussion of this passage in Inferno 17, Barolini argues that Dante is rarely compelled by popular stereotypes, often goes out of his way to avoid them, and that his treatment of Muslims is in no way unilateral.288 Perhaps there is an additional interpretation of this passage consistent with Barolini’s view of a more progressive Dante. I argue we can locate an additional valence of fraud not only in papal and royal associations and in the Western gaze of an Eastern Other but also embedded in the material processes of production of luxury textiles themselves. From this examination, a valence of fraudulence emerges pointing back to Florence.

Lodovico Castelvetro emphasizes Dante’s inclusion of rotelle colorate noting that the colored wheels on Geryon’s skin would be similar to those found on cloths made by the Turks and Tartars and those found in the weavings of Arachne, not pausing to differentiate that the latter is of course fictional.289 Barolini argues: “where historical specificity deflects stereotyping, allegorical figuration enables it.”290 She demonstrates

286 See Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

287 According to Singleton,“Tartari...Turchi: Both peoples were treacherous, from the Christian point of view, as their mention here, in connection with the ‘foul image of fraud,’ suggests. See a similar reference to mosques glimpsed within the city of Dis (Inf. VIII, 70 and the note).” Cited by commentary to “Inferno 17” by Charles Singleton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

288 Barolini, Teodolinda. “Dante's Sympathy for the Other, or the Non-Stereotyping Imagination: Sexual and Racialized Others in the Commedia.” Critica del Testo. 14, (2011), 177-204.

289 Cited from Commentary to “Inferno 17” by Ludovico Castelvetro (Modena, Società tipografica, 1886), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

290 Barolini, Teodolinda. “Dante's Sympathy for the Other, or the Non-Stereotyping Imagination: Sexual and Racialized Others in the Commedia.” Critica del Testo. 14, (2011), 177-204. 150

how Dante’s depiction of the femmina balba revels in contemporary misogynist tropes whereas his depiction of the historical woman, Francesca da Rimini, resists all the contemporary sexualized stereotypes of her sin of adultery. The inclusion of both

Arachne’s mythologized weavings and historically extant Turkish fabrics in the comparison to Geryon’s skin provides a useful tool to distinguish the ways in which the valence of fraud is embedded in textiles both writ large and in the specific material conditions of contemporary production.

Toynbee’s approach is the most focused on technique. In 1900, he scrutinized the commentary tradition to determine what types of cloths Dante might have referred to in this passage.291 In his analysis, Toynbee concludes there are three distinct candidates for technique: colored designs woven on the loom, a shot surface, or embroidery with gold threads.292 Attilio Momigliano also concurs with the diagnosis of embroidery, specifically il ricco ricamo.293 He locates his verdict in the contrast between the sommesse and the sovraposte. The former he perceives as the rich coloring of the base and the latter as overlay. Chiavacci Leonardi also attributes the flat and protruding surfaces of sommesse e sovraposte to embroidery, noting an “unparalleled richness of color and relief.”294

291 Toynbee’s sources include Colonel Yule (editor of Marco Polo) and the commentaries of Boccaccio, Jacopo della Lana, and Tommaso Casini. His approach is the closest to a material methodology I have found in the scholarship. See Toynbee, Paget.“Tartar Cloths (Inferno, XVII, 14).” Romania, tome 29 n°116, (1900), 559-564.

292 While Toynbee’s approach is the most focused on technique he does not appear to have done any research on material practices of making but instead relies on the commentary tradition.

294 English translation is mine. Chiavacci Leonardi does not exclusively identify the technique as embroidery. She is also open also to the possibility of weaving. I see no reason this passage could not incorporate and be inspired by multiple techniques. According to Chiavacci Leonardi: “sono le parti piane e quelle rilevae dei tessui ricamti a rilievo, le une sottomesse e le alter sovrapposte. Appare così che i nodi, cioè i viluppi coriacei, e le rotelle, cioè I cerchietti squamosi, erano rilevati sulla pelle del mostro. Il paragone coi tessuti orientali, ben noti in Italai atraverso i mercanti veneziani, vuol ricordare le operazioni del frodolento, per le quali il linguaggio commune usa sempre metafore tessili (ordire, tramare, tessere 151

Contemporary embroidery techniques could have provided the necessary relief and sparkling color referenced in the commentary. The highest quality embroidery, opus anglicanum, originated in England. Or nué, another lavish embroidery practice, allows the artisan to create the illusion of perspective with a specific technique including the use of gold. According to Johnston, or nué “enabled the embroiderer to handle coloured shading allowing the shimmer of the gold to mingle with the colours in a way hitherto unknown.”295 Although it is difficult to identify its precise moment of development, there is evidence of or nué in use in northern France and the Netherlands in the middle of the fourteenth century. Some techniques also carried associations with the East. Chinese embroiderers, during the Yuan period (1271-1368), practiced a similar custom that involved placing sheets of gold foil between the ground fabric and the needle loops “so that the gold glittered subtly in the light, reflecting through the openwork loops.”296

But other commentators have argued that the specific language of the passage points to the practice of weaving. With embroidery the thread can go in any direction, whereas in a woven fabric the decorative effects are all parallel to one another.

Unfortunately, Dante does not provide us with clues on the specific directionality of the effects and so we must rely on other tactics. While there are many diverse weaving techniques that can create texture before the cloth is removed from the loom, the most

inganni). Lo stesso senso ha il paragone con Aracne, famosa per le sue tele, e tramutata appunto nel ragno, che per mezzo della tela accalappia le sue vittime.” [Chiavacci Leonardi 515(n16)].

295 Johnstone explains that the fifteenth century “new feeling of realism in figure drawing” spread to textiles. Artists sketches reflected it but “embroiderers at first seemed unable to adapt their technique. See Johnstone, Pauline. High Fashion in the Church: The Place of Church Vestments in the History of Art from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. London: Manyey Publishing, 2002, 64.

296 Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 55.

152

fundamental construction, plain or simple weave, is based on a balanced distribution of warp and weft threads.297 According to Fosca, who identifies the technique in the passage as figurative weaving, sommesse refers to the background weave/weft and the nodi, or knots, and sovraposte refers to the designs in relief and the rotelle, or wheels. Fosca argues that the verb imposte, rather than simply meaning to put together or to arrange, specifically communicates the act of placing material on a frame or a loom, as one does when weaving. Likewise, Chiavacci Leonardi glosses imposte as poste sul telaio, or to place on a loom. To bolster her claim, she cites the use of the same verb in Purgatorio 21 where the context is explicit.298

Fosca notes the juxtaposition of historical reality with the legend of Arachne and argues both references work in service of expressing the “stupefacente complessità dei motivi,” astonishing complexity of motifs, on Geryon’s body.299 From an evolution of

297 Watt, James C., and Anne E. Wardwell. When Silk was Gold Central Asian and Chinese Textiles. New York City: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997.

298 Ma perchè lei che dì e notta fila non li avea tratta ancora la connocchia che Cloto impone a ciascuno e compila, but since she who spins night and day had not yet spun the spool that Clotho sets upon the distaff and adjusts for everyone. (Purgatorio 21.25-27)

299 English translation is mine. Fosca writes “Per dare un'idea della stupefacente complessità dei motivi presenti sul corpo di Gerione, Dante appronta due similitudini: nella prima, il termine di paragone è costituito da una realtà storica, ossia dalla nota valentìa di Turchi e Tartari (che al tempo abitavano la Persia ed i paesi limitrofi) nell'arte del tessere (forse le sommesse – “trame di fondo” – corrispondono ai nodi e le sovraposte – “disegni in rilievo” – alle rotelle); nella seconda, esso è costituito dalla leggenda di Aracne (Metam. VI.5ss.), la tessitrice lidia che osò sfidare Minerva al telaio, ma finì coll'essere trasformata dalla dea in ragno (cfr. Purg. XII, n. 43-45). Aracne – commenta Guido da Pisa – raffigura l'uomo superbo che disprezza la sapienza (Minerva). Alcuni attribuiscono a imposte non la semplice accezione di “composte”; bensì quella di “poste sul telaio”; il per, anche stavolta, introduce un complemento d'agente (franc. par). Si tenga presente che, nel Medioevo, i drappi tartari e turchi erano emblemi proverbiali, in virtù della complessità del loro disegno e della loro policromia, dell'inganno; e ad astuzia ed inganno fa pensare la tela di ragno. Cited from the commentary to “Inferno, XVII.16-17” by Fosca as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

153

design perspective, the nodi and rotelle referred to by Dante in this tercet are consistent with figurative designs found in fabrics from and/or influenced by contact with the East.

With the influx of textile imports, the diffusion of silk and velvet production across Italy, and the export of Italian finished textiles to the Ottoman Empire, there was an abundant amount of porosity and reciprocity of motifs. Italian silk designers began to incorporate oriental designs and Eastern motifs from silks imported from the Mongol Empire and from the Muslim Levant. Chinese designs, such as the phoenix, came to Italy and the

West through the textiles of Iran and Iraq. Floral motifs in Venetian textiles, particularly the Chinese lotus flower, Turkish carnation, and Persian pomegranate, Fanelli explains, most likely derive from imported originals. The same holds true for animal motifs such as lions, dragons, Persian senmury, and Chinese Fang-Hoang.300 Arabesques and Buddhist knots also originated from similar contacts with the East.

Samite, a type of compound twill weave produced in Persia, Syria, Central

Asia, Byzantium, and Europe from the fifth to twelfth century, dwells in the category of luxury patterned silks. Prized as an exotic trade items from the East, samite was frequently used in Europe for ecclesiastical and royal garments.301 In this weft faced twill weave structure, two sets of warps and multiple complementary sets of polychrome wefts are used in a single pass.302 One set of warps interlaces with the wefts and the other set of warps separates the color areas enabling their signature look, an intricate polychrome

300 Fanelli, Rosalia Bonito. Five centuries of italian textiles: A selection from the Museo del Tessuto Prato. Prato: Cassa di Risparmi e Depositi di Prato, 1981, 31.

301 Shot silk was probably referred to as purpura although the same term may have applied to other cloths. One of its primary attributes is iridescence.

302 A kind of silken cloth, often embroidered or interwoven with threads of gold or silver, See “samit(e).” Middle English Dictionary. Def.1. Michigan: University of Michigan, 2013.

154

design. The wefts drive the color variations in the design. The diagonal lines of the twill produce a lustrous quality. By 1248, the Venetians were producing interwoven gold silks and purpura on a large scale and by the late fourteenth century Venice had the largest silk market in Europe. 303 Silk weavers there became known as samitarii. Samites could be woven completely in silk, or half-silks with linen primary warps.304 Venetians were also producing samiti contrafacti, counterfeit or imitation samites, consisting of high-grade silk blended with less expensive cotton or hemp. Often they were made as part of an attempt to compete with the luxury silks of Lucca. Despite this cost-reduction technique, half silk fabrics were still extremely valuable. Some have been found in the French royal treasury. Monnas further records an apparent decline in royal purchases of samyt and samitell during the fourteenth century when they appear to have been gradually replaced with lampas.

Of the many possible weaving-based techniques alluded to in this passage, samite and its predecessor, lampas, compel the most serious consideration. Lampas, circulated in eleventh century Syria, Iraq, and Spain, was among the fabrics Italian merchants traded with the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century.305 See Figure 3 for an extant fourteenth century lampas fragment with signature gold membrane thread and phoenix design.

303 Purpura is understood to refer to shot silk, as well as other cloths, having irredescence in common.

304 Monnas suggests that the form “Samitelli [cf. samitellus, etc.] may have indicated a slightly cheaper, plainer version of this silk.” See Monnas, Lisa. ”Silk Cloths Purchased for the Great Wardrobe of the Kings of England, 1325–1462.” Textile History. 20:2, 283-307.

305 Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 47.

155

Figure 3 Lampas with phoenixes is a fourteenth century weft-patterned lampas silk with membrane gold thread; 28 x 13 cm; selvage, 0.5 cm. It resides in the collection at the Museo del Tessuto, in Prato, Italy (inv. no. 81.01.04.) Photographed by the author in 2018.

Lampas technique incorporates threads coated in precious metals. The metals contribute to its characteristic hefty weight. In lampas dating from Duecento and

156

Trecento Florence “yellow silk was often used as a substitute for gold.“306 The signature feature of lampas is a three-dimensionality of the fabric surface: what Albers calls the epidermis of the cloth. This technique is a captivating contender for achieving mimetic representation. When evaluating fabric, Albers calls for an examination of the interplay between the inner structure and outer tactile surface of a weaving. She cites the use of the term matière to denote the surface qualities of appearance that can be observed tactilely such as grain, smoothness, and gloss and laments the lack of a common umbrella term for the category of tactile properties related to the inner structure of the fabric, encompassing pliability, sponginess and porousness.307 In contrast to samite, with its single continuous face, lampas “juxtaposes two faces, a warp faced weave for the ground structure and a weft faced weave structure for the pattern.”308 This particular construction of two warps and various wefts allows colored decorations in relief to stand out from a dark background.

The interplay between the foundational structure and surface design could contribute to the vividness described by commentators in their exegesis of this passage.309

Chiavacci Leonardi attributes vitality to the descriptions of craft scenes, in general.310 In

306 Johnstone, Pauline. High Fashion in the Church: The Place of Church Vestments in the History of Art from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. London: Manyey Publishing, 2002, 62.

307 Albers, Anne. On Weaving. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017, 45.

308 Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011.

309 Chiavacci Leonardi continues “erano i popoli più famosi nell’arte della essiua, ma neppur loro (quindi nessuno) fecero mai tessuti con più ricchezza di colori o di relieve. I due versi porano il vivo e concerto ricordo di quei ricchi lavori, che appaiono allo sguardo con precisa evidenza, come accade di molte alre attività artigianali ricordate nel poema.” See Chiavacci Leonardi, ed., Inferno. [Milan: Mondadori, 2005], 516.

310 Chiavacci Leonardi, ed., Inferno [Milan: Mondadori, 2005], 516.

157

the framework Albers provides, the dichotomy between outer appearance and inner structure provides an opportunity for harmony but also the possibility for discord between the two constituents. Lampas fabric has two distinct sides: a luminous front and a reverse side that has been described as an unbroken tangle of threads. Unlike damasks, in which one side is a photonegative of the other, lampas cloths are typically viewed from only one direction. The visual and tactile appearance of the inner structure on the reverse side differs greatly from the intended viewing surface providing the perfect tone for the moment Dante catches sight of Geryon: “Sempre a quel ver c’ha faccia di menzogna”

(Faced with that truth which seems a lie [Inf. 16.124). The dissonant interplay between surface and structure contribute a rich valence of fraud to this passage in a way that is embedded in the making of the fabric itself. With its origins in East, documented presence in Duecento and Trecento Florence, stunning aesthetic surface properties, and woven internal structure, lampas persuades.

Due to the emphasis in the commentary tradition on lush color and relief, the final techniques I explore fall under the classification of velvet production. The depth of color achieved by velvet, according to Elena Phipps, stems from its dense pile surface. A series of supplementary warp loops across the width of the fabric must be cut with a blade to achieve the pile distinctive to velvet.311 The loops, formed between two passes of weft, are first lifted, then a rod is inserted, and finally the warps are then lowered with the rod in place so that they can be cut.312 The development of velvet was concomitant with

311 A supplementary weft does not form the basic ground weave of a cloth. Instead it is used to create patterns or designs. If removed, it does not interfere with the structure of the cloth. See Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 75.

312 Ibid., 80.

158

technical developments of the loom.313 In particular, the draw loom facilitates the mechanism for maneuvering the warp threads.314 The exact origin of the draw loom has not been settled, but most scholars suggest a location in China or the Middle East. Due to the large amounts of expensive materials—silk and often, precious metals— required for construction, velvets are exclusively categorized as luxury goods. 315 For example,

Monnas notes that the length of silk needed for the pile warp of plain velvet was “six times greater than for the main warp.”316 While there is some geographic and chronologic overlap for velvet technique and this passage, velvets did not reach their full potential in

Italy until the Renaissance. Some of the techniques below are explored in the spirit of

Dante not having personally interacted with them but under the rubric of Dante anticipating aesthetic developments to come.317

Though velvet production in Italy dates from the fourteenth century, silk velvets, in addition to regular silk, were being imported from the Mongol empire since the thirteenth century. Phipps explains:

Safavid Persian weavers produced lush figurative velvets, combining metal round surfaces with silk pile in multiple colors. Turkish weavers, notably those of Bursa and other Anatolian regions, produced complex velvets with large-scale designs for the court

313 Ibid., 81.

314 Phipps notes: “The draw loom facilitates the lifting of individual cords attached to shafts which lift or lower individual warp threads according to design.” Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 30.

315 Regarding the exorbitant expense of velvet, a single bolt (30 m x 50 cm) of the finest dyed velvet would have cost 250 to 300 florins, roughly equivalent to the cost of an urban residence and a sharecropping farm, or approximately ten times the annual salary of a construction worker immediately after the plague. See Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 81.

316 Monnas, Lisa. Renaissance Velvets. London: V&A Publishing, 2012, 14.

317 I am not suggesting that Dante is predicting future weaving techniques, only that he might be imagining cloth even more luxurious and mimetically capable than those he has already personally seen.

159

of Süleyman and subsequent Ottoman dynasties between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. 318

While there is extensive evidence of velvet manufacture in Valencia and other Iberian cities, production scale remained small until the fifteenth century when Italian weavers began immigrating to Spain.319 Similarly, Paris hosted small-scale velvet production dating from the thirteenth century but did not reach larger scale levels until the fifteenth century. Contact with the East, undoubtedly, brought about technical advancement in

Venetian weaving.320 The growth of the industry also coincides with an exodus of velvet weavers from Lucca, the first site of significant Italian velvet production, in the fourteenth century. The Italians rapidly honed their skills and became, in Europe, the lead producers of velvet. Phipps explains:

Italian velvets, produced from the fourteenth century, held pride of place in the vital textile industry of the region. Venice was renowned for its luxurious velvet weaves and knowledge of the production methods was jealously guarded by artisan guilds and town magnates who enacted laws to protect them.321

Due to signature construction techniques, different geographic locations became identified with distinctive styles of velvet production. For example, fourteenth century

Genovese velvet was renowned for its lightweight, dense, pile and ability to undercut other velvets in price.322 Monnas attributes the competitive features of Genovese velvet to

318 Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011), 81.

319 Jacoby, David. “The Movement of Silk and Silk Textiles Italy and the Mediterranean in the 12th-14th centuries.” Textiles and wealth in 14th century Florence. Wool, silk, painting, Ed. Cecilie Hillberg (Florence: Giunti, 2017), 18–29.

320 Fanelli, Rosalia Bonito. Five centuries of italian textiles: A selection from the Museo del Tessuto Prato. Prato: Cassa di Risparmi e Depositi di Prato, 1981, 31.

321 Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 81.

322 Monnas, Lisa. Renaissance Velvets. Victoria and Albert Museum, 2012, 8. 160

their use of slender warp threads constructed from particularly fine Calabrian and Sicilian silk. Florentines also engaged in velvet production in the fourteenth century and often used regulations already established by their own silk guild, Arte di Por’ Santa Maria. To improve quality, according to Monnas, they needed to needed to “attract specialist craftsmen to produce velvet weaving equipment and by creating an industry of gold- thread production.”323

There are three main categories of velvet: plain, figured, and brocaded. The technique of figured velvet, noted for producing curvilinear motifs, textural and color effects, originated from Syria, Iran and Egypt. John Ruskin interprets the variegated nature of Geryon’s skin as a direct reference to colors. Figured velvets could provide a poetic symmetry to the concept of the skin of a beast, with the face of a man and the body of a snake, being represented by a type of fabric that typically incorporated the designs of animals or people. The signature feature of brocade velvet, embossed design, uses a technique in which discontinuous supplementary wefts weave the design.324 This practice lends itself well to creating a specific pattern with color. One particularly dazzling brocade technique, called, uses metallic weft loops made of silver or gold wrapped silk threads. Unfortunately the introduction of allucciolato can only be traced to the second decade of the fifteenth century.325

323 Ibid., 8.

324 Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 16.

325 “The introduction of weft loops in velvet may be traced as early as the 1420s, and both massed bouclè allucciolato effects were already represented in Flemish paintings of the 1430s.” Monnas, Lisa. Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Painting 1300-1550. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, 53.

161

Across all modalities of velvet, there is a causal relationship between the number of heights of pile and the intensity of the alto-basso effect. Referring to the sculptural, three dimensional effects of alto-basso technique in velvets, Fanelli writes: “The technique of pile-on-pile velvet, velluto alto-basso, in which the cut pile is woven in two or more heights to achieve a pattern is a European creation, no such velvets had existed in

Asia Minor nor in Persia or in China.326 In general, a singular height of pile corresponds to lower quality fabrics and multiple heights of pile and wefts to higher quality. While the allucciolato and brocading techniques are undoubtedly sophisticated and dazzling in their visual and tactile effects, their provenance and chronology discount them from further consideration. Owing to the exchange of knowledge, circulation of objects, and migration of craftspersons as well as evolving and imprecise naming conventions, it was and sometimes still is difficult to determine the city or culture of origin for a particular textile.

Ottoman and Italian silks and velvets from this period were frequently confused with one another. Some design elements assist in textile identification including the thickness of the silk threads, weave structures, and types of dyes.327 These distinguishing factors for high quality textiles draw attention on the one hand to the processes, rules, and regulations put in place to ensure that strict standards in production are maintained and on the other hand to the efforts and attempts to subvert those rules — a prime example of fraudulence.

326 This height differential was further highlighted by use of metallic, gilt threads worked in bouclè and velluti allucciolati technique. Fanelli, Rosalia Bontio. Five centuries of italian textiles, 1300-1800, Prato: Cassa Di Risparmi e Depositi di Prato, 1981, 49.

327 Monnas, Lisa. Renaissance Velvets. London: V&A Publishing, 2012.

162

For the risk of deception lies not just in the mimetic aspect of one finished textile imitating another, but also in each step in the course of its production. The quality of the raw materials, the modes of processing, and the virtuosity of the maker all contribute to the character of the final product.328 Factors such as loom widths, thread count, and dye content were minutely controlled and could therefore be used to identify the provenance of a fabric.329 Each stage of production offers opportunities for authenticity and for deception. Monnas insists one of the functions of the guild inspection procedures was to prevent outright fraud. In Milan, the seal of the guild was attached to the textile while still on the loom to ensure a continuity of custody. In Venice, a panel of expert merchants often appraised finished silks to vouch for their quality and authenticity. Yet, as Monnas illustrates, there are many examples of fraud and attempted fraud: from the use of inferior quality yarns to the practice by velvet makers of adding water and paste to imitate the appearance of a thicker and plusher pile at lower costs. Along this polarity of quality and fraud, two particular sites to investigate emerge: the dye process and selvages.

Because silk velvets were typically dyed in the yarn and not by the finished piece, dyers had to be engaged early in the process. Silk merchants would purchase raw material and dye and deliver both to the dyers. Madder was used extensively in Italian wool but absent from Italian silk. Christoffersen notes: “Dyes extracted from plants such as woad

(used for blue and black colors), weld (for yellow), and madder (red) were traded heavily

328 In Italy, a master weaver was assisted by one or more journeymen, lavorante, and apprentices, garzoni. In Turkey, there was a similar structure with a master weaver, usta, journeyman, ikalfa, and apprentice, sakird.) See Monnas, Lisa. Renaissance Velvets. (London: V&A Publishing, 2012), 20.

329 Ibid., 20.

163

across the continent.”330 Red insect dyes were perhaps the most expensive. The extremely valuable red dye, kermes, made from kermes vermilio harvested from oak, was used in the luxury wool industry. Its corollary in the silk industry was chermisi. Higher quality chermisi was derived from Polish cochineal and the lower quality chermisi was made from the larger Armenian cochineal insect. The Ottomans used an entirely different source for coloring silk red, typically lac extracted from the insect Kerria lacca found in

India and South East Asia. Lac dye present in the warp threads is characteristic of

Ottoman velvets. An exploration of dye production reveals a vast global network of trade relationships. Christoffersen explains: “Imported dyes, capable of creating colors that were brighter and more fast than those native European plant dyes could produce, were favored in the production of luxury textiles–colored silks, for example.”331 The colorful nature of the designs could on their own signal exotic origins.

The color of a selvage and/or the color of a specific thread incorporated into a selvage could communicate multiple data points about the cloth as a whole, including the quality of dye, the number of thread counts, and in some cases even the identity of a specific weaver.332 The colors were generally assigned by the silk guilds as part of a larger quality control system. While legislation regarding this practice dates from the second half of the fifteenth century, Monnas reminds us that often legislation “simply codified existing practices.”333 In general, fourteenth and fifteenth century Italian velvets

330 Christoffersen, Nynne Just. “Dye.” Textile Terms: A glossary, Ed. Anika Reinek. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 85.

331 Ibid., 85.

332 Similar to a trademark.

333 Monnas, Lisa. Renaissance Velvets. (London: V&A Publishing, 2012), 25.

164

have plain selvages with white denoting the highest quality and yellow or blue denoting lower quality ratings. However, there are many exceptions. For instance, white or grey velvets could have selvages of any color and in Venice green selvages with a gold strip indicated high quality.334

Nevertheless, the same practices that indicated high quality also presented an opportunity for deception. Selvage customs formed no exception to criminal ingenuity.

Dante deploys textile language consciously and judiciously in service of larger themes and corruption, specifically of the local variety, is a prevalent one in this text.

In Purgatorio, the entire system becomes suspect:

si rompe del montar l’ardita foga per le scalee che si fero ad etade ch’era sicuro il quaderno e la doga;

the daring slope of the ascent is broken by steps that were constructed in an age when record books and measures could be trusted (Purgatorio 12.103-105)

The record books are a direct indicator back to Florentine business practices. But when systems of measurement are called into question the scope of corruption becomes even larger. An examination of cloths in circulation and the techniques employed in creating them reveals and magnifies existing anxieties about counterfeiting and fraud.

Dante’s indictment of record books and systems of measurement calls into question community standards. This insecurity creates a sense of free-fall, of being taken for a ride by fraud, incarnated as Geryon in the text.

The choice of textile instead of another form of mimetic representation thus becomes clear. Albers comments that the “directness of communication presupposes the

334 Ibid., 25.

165

closest interaction of medium and design.”335 A painted face obeys other laws of formation than a woven face, and the more clearly the process relates to the form, the stronger the resultant impact will be.”336 The skin of the beast of fraud is best depicted in a medium that visually and tactilely imitates skin, reflects both local production and global trade, is visually beautiful and metaphysically dangerous. Materials and processes guide design, tenets that Dante surely considered in selecting his terza rime structure and rhyme scheme. Albers explicitly identifies the literary connection when she observes, referring to the excellence of Peruvian weavers, that their content, animals, plants, and zigzags “are all conceived within the weaver’s idiom.”337 Regarding the use of textile covers on early medieval liturgical books, Ganz writes: “the silk contributed to the complex concept of the book’s sacramental corporeality.”338 In the same manner, the

Tartar cloth comparison gives Geryon’s representation its corporeality. Ganz provides a specific example of how the dual sidedness of clothes presents an opportunity for deception, citing Gothic stone sculptures at Strasburg Cathedral where the outer face of the garment appears beautiful while the decayed reverse side reveals a tangle of frogs and snakes. The stunning exterior of Geryon belies what lies inside.

The Geryon scene in Inferno brings together concerns about fraud, verisimilitude and mimesis, beauty, and skin, all of which are intimately embedded in luxury silk textiles in the cultural imaginary. Is Dante reporting back on something he has seen with his own eyes as in Toynbee’s conclusion? High-end embroidery practices with the

335 Albers, Anne. On Weaving. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017, 94.

336 Ibid., 94.

337 Ibid., 94.

338 Ganz, David. “Recto/Verso.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed.Anika Reineke. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 198. 166

inclusion of gold threads transmit compelling light-reflecting properties and a freedom of design to go in any direction. Samite with its polychrome components and hefty weight, as well as design, forms a compelling candidate but its successor, lampas, has perhaps the most persuasive case. With the weight and luminosity of samite and a distinctly dual- sided structure that allows for dissonance between the outside and inside, lampas physically embodies many of Dante’s metaphysical concerns. Dante’s description might anticipate the luminous and vibrant possibilities that techniques like allucciolato and brocade velvets bring into being and higher circulation later in the Renaissance.

Or perhaps, Dante is imagining something new, creating a fiction, quel ver c’ha faccia di menzogna to use Dante’s own language in describing Geryon. Design motifs and structural developments across all of these techniques reveal a nuanced and iterative process of exchange, imitation, and innovation between East and West and within the

Italian peninsula. The velvet techniques in particular draw attention to quality control measures designed to stave off fraud and the ingenuity of those trying to evade them. In addition to the historical precedent of textile metaphors using the language of deception, cited by Chiavacci Leonardi, an exploration of contemporary textile practices reveals additional connections to fraud closer in time and geography than Arachne.339 A polarity emerges with quality and authenticity on one end and deception and fraud on the other.

Greed is not attributed solely to hypocritical clergy but also to counterfeiters, traders, and corrupt practices widespread in local mercantile culture. If we read the allusions to deception in this passage more locally and more materially they can be paired with others

339 Consider words like ordire (to warp/to plot to scheme) and tramare (to weave/to orchestrate a plot).

167

in the Commedia that critique corruption within the mercantile and consumerist culture of medieval Tuscany.

3.2. Boccaccio and Tartar Cloths

Boccaccio’s commentary on Dante famously breaks off at canto seventeen of

Inferno, just following his exposition of the Tartar cloths. In Decameron 6.10, Boccaccio replicates a portion of Dante’s language concerning Turkish and Tartar cloths while inverting the context. Dioneo narrates the tale about a fraudulent friar, Frate Cipolla, who attempts to deceive and financially exploit the local peasant congregation by convincing them that a feather in his possession was acquired in the Holy Land and belonged to the angel Gabriel. In essence, Boccaccio situates his reference to Tartar cloth between both an historically extant place, the Holy Land, and the non-historical, non-human figure, the biblical angel Gabriel, in the same way that Dante embeds a characterization of the materialization of fraud, Geryon, near a reference to historically extant Tartar and

Turkish cloths and the non-human mythological figure of Arachne. Much of the humor in

Decameron 6.10 derives from these types of juxtapositions within the novella and across the text with Dante’s Commedia. The protagonist, Frate Cipolla, is described as il miglior brigante del mondo. His storytelling prowess and eloquence are compared to those of

Cicero and Quintillian. Olson identifies Cipolla as “the Certaldan figure of rhetorical fraud.” 340

In a clear nod to Dante’s organization of the afterlife, Frate Cipolla describes his servant Guccio as possessing nine qualities presented as virtues but which are in reality vices: “egli è tardo, sugliardo e bugiardo” (he is lying, lazy, and lousy [Dec.6.10.17]). In

340 Olson, Kristina M. “The Ethical and Sartorial Geography of the Far East: Tartar Textiles in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Esposizioni.” Le Tre Corone. Rivista internazionale di studi su Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio. VI (2019): 125-139. 168

an attempt to impress and seduce Nuta, the innkeeper’s maid and Guccio’s primary focus,

Guccio makes exorbitant and false claims, all of which are belied by his dressing practices. The narrator describes Guccio’s attempt to impress Nuta:

E senza riguardare a un suo cappuccio sopra il quale era tanto untume, che avrebbe condito il calderon d’Altopascio, e a un suo farsetto rotto e ripezzato e intorno al collo e sotto le ditella smaltato di sucidume, con più macchie e di più colori che mai drappi fossero tartereschi o indiani, e alle sue scarpette tutte rotte e alle calze sdrucite, le disse, quasi stato fosse il Siri di Ciastiglione.

And with absolutely no concern for his cowl, which was covered with so much grease it would have seasoned all the soup kettles in Altopascio, or his torn and patched-up doublet, covered with sweat stains all around his collar and under his arms and in more spots and colors than a piece of cloth from India or China ever had, or his shoes which were all worn out, or his hose, which were full of holes, he spoke to her as if he were Milord of Châtillons.341

Boccaccio paints a vivid picture of Guccio based primarily on his dressing practices. He has a greasy cowl and his doublet is torn, with perspiration stains around the collar and under the arms. To borrow Fosca’s language, the stupefacente complessità dei motivi on Geryon’s torso and back are reduced to the stains of bodily fluids and cooking grease, revealing Guccio’s poor hygiene, bad manners, and limited resources.

Every essential piece of clothing that he is wearing is damaged, dirty, and disintegrating off his body. His shoes are worn out from use and there are holes in his hose. A closer look at this description uncovers various modifications from Dante’s text. Boccaccio substitutes più macchie for sommerse and sovraposte, essentially turning complex detailed construction techniques into accidental and undesirable stains. He repeats più colori but inverts the order, placing it second in his version following più macchie. This alteration converts the variations in color from something to be marveled at to something to be repulsed by. The entire description is an inversion of the attributes lauded by Dante

341 Decameron 6.10.23. 169

and culturally valued in these cloths. Boccaccio repeats the term drappi but elides the cultural source from Dante’s Tartari né Turchi to tartaresechi o indiani. He commits a similar geographic elision at the end of the novella with the substitution and inclusion of

Egypt. The geographic substitution purposefully blurs the origin. Olson observes: “the geographical and moral compass of the Decameron turns to Tuscany in its storytelling.”342 We could view this aspect also as an imitation of Dante if we accept my premise that the comparison to Geryon contains an implicit connection to Tuscan fraudulence as I have argued above.

If opulence and profligacy are connected to themes of fraudulence, Guccio’s embodiment of their opposites in no way implies authenticity on his part. Almost everyone in this tale is fraudulent or gullible. Guccio puts on the persona of a wealthy person insisting he could provide for Nuta in a material fashion: “che rivestir la voleva e rimetterla in arnese, e trarla di quella cattività di star con altrui e senza gran possession d'avere ridurla in isperanza di miglior fortuna e altre cose assai” (to rehabit her and put her in trim, and raise her from her abject condition, and place her where, though she would not have much to call her own, at any rate she would have hope of better things, with much more to the like effect [Dec. 6.10.24]). It is clear he has neither the capital nor the capability for these empty promises. He is in this act, by every definition, a fraud, albeit a less harmless one compared to the real fraudulent character of this novella,

Cipolla. Guccio is the imitation cloth in this story. Cipolla’s motives are more nefarious,

342 According to Olson: “Here Frate Cipolla stands in lieu of Geryon as the Certaldan figure of rhetorical fraud, while the geographical and moral compass of the Decameron turns to Tuscany in its storytelling.” Olson, Kristina M. “The Ethical and Sartorial Geography of the Far East: Tartar Textiles in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Esposizioni.” Le Tre Corone. Rivista internazionale di studi su Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio VI (2019):125-139.

170

to deceive and rob. Guccio’s only vice is chasing women and the woman in this case is wiser than the congregants who are deceived at the hands of Cipolla.

Two close friends, Giovanni del Bragoniera and Biagio Pizzini, decide to play a trick on Brother Cipolla by stealing the feather and replacing it with charcoal. They sneak into his bedroom and find what they are looking for: trovarono in un gran viluppo di zendado fasciata una piccolo cassettina; ;a quale aperta , trovarono in essa una penna di quelle della coda d’un pappagallo, la quale avvisarono dovere esser quella che egli promessa avea di mostrare a’ certaldesi discovered a little casket wrapped in an extravagant length of silk , and when they lifted the lid, they found a feather inside, just like the kind you find on a parrot’s tail; and they realized that it had to be the one that Brother Cipolla had promised the people of Certaldo.343

Not surprisingly, pappagallo occurs only here in the Decameron.344 Even though the word for parrot is unique in application here and exotic in terms of what it represents,

Boccaccio deploys it to communicate the very opposite. Its quotidian nature in comparison to the nonexistent feather from the angel Gabriel conjures a sort of paradox of an imaginary material remnant from a spiritual being. Dalton notes:

African parrots and Rose-Tinged and Alexandrine parakeets from India had been imported into the Roman Empire from the classical period and their ability to talk meant that, although they were prized, they were also lampooned as raucous figures of fun.

However, as the empire's trade routes declined and parrots once again became rare in

343 Decameron 6.10.25-26.

344 Its plural, pappagalli, is included in the same novella.

171

Europe, they became the focus of wonder rather than derision, and by the thirteenth century they were esteemed as special—even sacred.345

The recently uncovered fact that a cockatoo, a particular type of parrot from

Australia, was delivered to Frederick II as a gift challenges the historiographical tendency to downplay the maritime achievements of indigenous Southeast Asians. Dalton notes:

“The fact that a cockatoo reached Sicily during the 13th century shows that merchants plying their trade to the north of Australia were part of a flourishing network that reached west to the Middle East and beyond.” In comparison, other types of parrots served as companion animals to people across the economic spectrum.346 Wherever you place a parrot feather on the continuum from ordinary to exotic, it undoubtedly registers as more common than an angel’s wing. Dioneo, the narrator, specifically articulates that the citizens of Certaldo in this story had neither seen nor heard of parrots, in this simpler time and place: “in quella contrada quasi in niente erano da gli abitanti sapute; anzi, durandovi ancora la rozza onestà degli antichi, non che veduti avessero pappagalli ma di gran lunga la maggior parte mai uditi non gli avean ricordare” (yet in those parts folk knew next to nothing of them; but, adhering to the honest, simple ways of their forefathers, had not seen, nay for the most part had not so much as heard tell of, a parrot [Dec. 6.10.28]).

In the world of luxury silk textiles, the pappagallo appears as a design motif.

Through the trade opportunities facilitated by the Pax Mongolica, cloths combining the

345 Dalton, Heather & Salo, Jukka & Niemelä, Pekka and Örmä, Simo." Frederick II of Hohenstaufen's Australasian Cockatoo: Symbol of Detente between East and West and Evidence of the Ayyubids' Global Reach." Parergon, vol. 35 no. 1, 2018, 35-60.

346 Rockeller, Laurel A. “Parrots and Popinjays: a Brief Look at the Role of Companion Birds in Medieval Europe.” Laurel A. Rockefeller Biographical Historian, 24 July 2014, http://www.peersofbeinan.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/parrots-and-popinjays-a-brief-look-at-the-role-of- companion-birds-in-medieval-europe/.

172

textile traditions of Chinese, Muslim, and Central Asian cultures circulated in Italy.347

Often these cloths blended naturalistic, botanical motifs from the Far East with geometric patterns from Persia and fantastical designs from China. Winged creatures and exotic birds appeared in cloths from Asia and the Levant. One Chinese motif, noted for its rich and colorful tail plumage and long thin neck, is the feng huang [Fang-Hoeng], a legendary mythological bird sometimes compared to the phoenix. Often the feng huang holds a branch in its beak. In textiles of Eastern origin the bird is frequently depicted in a dynamic pose that Italian weavers would often imitate and modify in their productions.

Within the Romanesque tradition, Italian weavers would transfer Asian bird poses into depictions of other winged creatures including eagles, parrots, falcons, griffins and dragons. The parrot therefore assigns both an Italian and exotic provenance to the objects in this novella creating further tension between Tartar and Indian cloths and Italian imitations of said cloths and reinforcing the duplicitous aspersion cast on the Florentine territory.

3.2.1 Wrapping

When the two young men sneak into Cipolla’s room to find the feather, they unwrap multiple layers of cloth: “la quale aperta, trovarono in un gran viluppo di zendado fasciata una piccola cassettina; la quale aperta, trovarono in essa una penna di quelle della coda d'un pappagallo” (The wallet opened, they found, wrapt up in many folds of taffeta, a little casket, on opening which they discovered one of the tail-feathers of a parrot [Dec.

6.10.26]). Boccaccio’s repetition of la quale in his description of folding performs the act of wrapping and highlights what Ganz identifies as an important domain for the recto-

347 Tartar cloths included.

173

verso relationship.348 The casket and the taffeta signal the containing and wrapping practices concomitant with reliquary practices.349 The standard process for obtaining relics begins with opening a coffin, removing the silk that shrouded the bones, and then re-wrapping the bones in linen or silk and placing them in a reliquary casket.350The linen or silk, used to wrap the relic, obtains a special role between the sacred remains and the container.351 Kyoko Nomoto explains:

The category of so-called <> offers another example, where, in reverse, wrapping textiles are transformed through contact with the contents. A textile contact relic, often clothing or a shroud, is a piece of textile that has acquired the status of a relic due to its physical contact with the body of a holy figure (Goehring 2010).352

Nomoto cites the Turin shroud as a famous example of a textile contact relic consigning its sacred status to the human body-shaped stains on the surface caused by the blood and bodily fluid of Christ.353 Because references to the Turin shroud post-date both

Dante and Boccaccio, I instead name the Veronica, the linen veil bearing the likeness of

Christ’s face and included by Dante in Paradiso 31. The human-produced stains on

Guccio’s clothes perform a secular inversion of the Veronica in addition to a mocking resemblance to the earlier panni tartareschi. Unlike the Veronica, the zendado in Dec.

348 Ganz writes: “Apart from clothing, foldable objects are an important domain for the orchestration of the recto-verso relationship.” See Ganz, David. “Recto/Verso.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed.Anika Reineke. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 198.

349 Boccaccio refers to the object as Friar Cipolla’s relic.

350 Immonen, Visa. “Folding and Wrapping the Sacred: Living With Late Medieval Relics and Reliquaries in Europe.“ Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bard Graduate Center, New York City. 9 April 2018. Lecture.

351 For more on the device as mechanism for protecting and controlling sacred powers see Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Also See Bynum, Carolyn Walker. Christian Materiality.An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. (New York: MIT Press, 2015).

352 Nomoto, Kyoko. “Wrapping.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten : Edition Imorde, 2017, 310.

353 Ibid., 310.

174

6.10 holds no powers; it is an empty signifier, part of the comical transposition of Inferno

17 that Boccaccio perpetuates with precise details in this novella.

To pull off their beffa, the young men take the feather, replace it with lumps of coal, and leave everything as they found it, thus implying a re-wrapping of the new false

‘relic’ to replace the old false ‘relic.’ Massimo Leoni asserts that wrapping establishes narrativity into objects by implying the object was wrapped in the past, can be unwrapped in the future, and instilling a desire in the observer to see the object (un)wrapped.354

Much of the plot relies on embedding narrative tension in the reader who, unlike the protagonist, knows what is actually wrapped in the casket. We long for the object to be unwrapped and Cipolla’s dishonesty revealed. Wrapping signifies the application of not just material, but also metaphysical and metaphorical layers. When the coal is revealed during the sermon, Frate Cipolla creates an elaborate explanation to the delight of the crowd, claiming that the coals are relics from the roasting of Saint Lawrence. The beffa is on us, the reader. The material’s meaning is as pliable as the fabric. Frate Cipolla wraps the object in his own constructed narrative.

Andreuola in Decameron 4.6 wraps the body of her dead lover, Gabriotto, in a piece of cloth secured from a chest in her bedroom.355 The narrator specifically identifies the raw material as silk: “E prestamente per una pezza di drappo di seta, la quale aveva in un suo forziere, la mandò” (She promptly sent the maid to fetch a length of silk cloth which was kept in one of her strongboxes [Dec. 4.6.27]). Andreuola’s possession of this

354 Leone, Massimo. “Wrapping Transcendence: The Semiotics of Reliquaries.” Signs and Society, vol. 2, no. S1 (Supplement 2014). Semiosis Research Center at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/674314. Accessed 10 May 2018.

355 It is worthwhile to note that in the preceding story, Decameron 4.5, Lisabetta wraps her deceased lover’s head in cloth as well but there it is simply referred to simply as il drappo and bel drappo without indication of its source material.

175

type of cloth attests to her economic status and helps covey the erotic nature of her love for Gabriotto. Beyond reflecting thirteenth to fifteenth century burial practices, the act of wrapping Gabriotto’s body in a shroud bestows a sense of sanctification on their relationship and sets up an ongoing meditation on reliquary customs in this novella.

Relics function as a site of connection between the living and the dead. Andreuola bolsters her relationship with Gabriotto with a series of actions including wrapping his body. The order of materials, first layers of white linen and then layers of more expensive silk, magnifies the contemporary practice of dressing living bodies with linen undergarments closest to the body and foregrounding the more luxurious textiles on the exterior of the body where they could be visually consumed.

After placing Gabriotto on the silk cloth, Andreuola weaves a wreath of roses and puts a ring on his finger. The ritualistic behavior mimics liturgical functions; she places herself in a genealogy of weaving women from the Bible and makes their union official, albeit post-mortem. With the help of her presumably strong maid, Andreuola carries

Gabriotto out of the garden with the intention of returning his body to his family. In this moment, the zendado performs its most rudimentary function, holding and protecting the body. The pragmatic reason human bones were commonly wrapped in textiles before being deposited into a reliquary container was to keep the bones together and protect them against friction from the outside container. Many characteristics, including visual sheen, color, and smooth surface-texture make silk ideal for the outer wrapping layer but perhaps the most important attributes fall under the category Albers refers to as structural tactile properties.356 If we try to imagine wrapping delicate relics in multiple layers of

356 Another sensory property of silk to consider is its lower overall aroma impact (i.e., less strong smell). Often the purple dyes used in silk in a liturgical context had a potent musk smell that contributed to the 176

folded wool, we see that the pliability and strength of silk coupled with its delicate handfeel provide the appropriate functional and aesthetic properties for this purpose.

These properties also allow silk, like linen and metaphor in language, to reveal and conceal simultaneously.357 An object draped in silk, often retains some of its shape.

Subsequently, it comes as no surprise that Andreuola’s attempt to transport

Gabriotto’s corpse is unsuccessful. When intercepted by the officers of the Signory, they easily discern that she is transporting a dead body, despite it being covered in silk.

Recognizing where she exists within the power structure, Andreuola attempts to negotiate with the authorities. In exchange for a promise to not escape, she insists that they not touch her or the body: “‘ma niuno di voi sia ardito di toccarmi, se io obbediente vi sono, né da questo corpo alcuna cosa rimuovere, se da me non vuole essere accusato.’ Per che, senza essere da alcun tocca, con tutto il corpo di Gabriotto n'andò in palagio” (‘but let none of you presume to touch me, so long as I obey you, or to take away aught that is on this body, if he would not that I accuse him.’ And so, none venturing to lay hand upon either her person or the corpse, she entered the palace [Dec.4.6.32 ]). Andreuola seeks to restrict access to both her living body and Gabriotto’s corpse. This is an act of resistance.

A reverse Piccarda, Andreuola is forced, by Gabriotto’s tragic death, to break her secret marital vows but she chooses to transition to a cloistered life. Andreuola uses her church experience, along with incense. In contrast, wool (and lanolin in particular) often has a distinctive odor.

357 Nomoto observes: “wrapping textiles can be used to hide or reveal, camouflage or emphasize, transform or represent. This responsive and multifunctional capacity of textile wrapping derives from the fundamental properties of textiles. Textiles are innately fluid and sensory in that they are folded, draped, absorbent, and stretched. More specifically textiles absorb odor, get stained, create sounds, and are influenced by gravity and airflow. Textiles excite the human senses thorugh touch, sight, smell, and sounds, and serve as cognitive cues through which people relive or imagine related experiences. These properties of textiles activate the interaction between wrapping textiles and their contents, and influence the viewer’s perception on them.” Nomoto, Kyoko. “Wrapping.” Textile Terms: A Glossary Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 311.

177

zendado, a cloth constructed from costly material and produced to convey luxury, paradoxically to renounce the world. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 dictated that relics were not to be displayed outside of a container nor touched by bare hands because of their holy nature, highly restricting access to relics.358 In a completely heterodox manner, she performs the rituals of a priest outside of the church as a gateway to the nunnery.

3.3 Disintegration

As an object in process, woven cloth exists in a liminal space: not raw but not fully cooked. Once raw wool, silk, or flax has been spun into thread and warp and weft woven together to create a strong yet pliable matrix, the raw materials are subsumed and transformed into a bolt of cloth that is not yet a finished textile. This moment of transition provides an opportunity to examine woven cloth conceptually. Embedded in a swath of cloth is the limitless potential for transformation into countless finished objects such as cloaks, doublets, or gowns. But if for a moment we relinquish the expected teleological conclusion I inserted into the prior sentence, then we are free to consider that the temporal directionality can just as easily point to cloth as being constructed, or becoming, as to being in a state of deconstruction, or unbecoming.

One pertinent passage in Paradiso, discussed in chapter two in relation to tools, illustrates the latter:

Ben se’ tu manto che tosto raccorce: sì che, se non s’appon di dì in die, lo tempo va dintorno con le force.

358 Immonen, Visa. “Folding and Wrapping the Sacred: Living With Late Medieval Relics and Reliquaries in Europe.“ Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bard Graduate Center, New York City. 9 April 2018. Lecture.

178

You are indeed a cloak that soon wears out, so that if, day by day, we add no patch, then circling time will trim you with its shears. (Paradiso16.7-9)

The verb raccorce educes the declining portion of the life cycle of a textile object. The decomposition is portrayed as natural and inevitable, just as our efforts to resist it are.

Deconstruction can also be purposeful. Consider the femmina balba, who tears at her clothes transforming them to rags:

L’altra prendea, e dinanzi l’apria fendendo i drappi, e mostravami 'l ventre; quel mi svegliò col puzzo che n’uscia.

He seized the other, baring her in front, tearing her clothes, and showing me her belly; the stench that came from there awakened me (Purgatorio 19.31-33)

From a syllabic perspective panni would have fit in this tercet, but Dante selected drappi, the same term he used to describe the Turkish and Tartar cloths.359 In small ways, a narrative of decline and disintegration has always been entwined within the discourse of production.

Boccaccio dedicates the first half of his proemio to a description of the abject horrors of the plague, attributing one of the causes of its rampant transmission to

359 There is one instance of drappo (Inferno 15.122) and two instances of drappi (Inferno 17.18 and Purgatorio 19.33) in the Commedia. Inferno 15 concludes with reference to a green cloth in a simile below. For comparison, the word abito is used in the next canto, Inferno 16 where Dante-pilgrim is recognized by his clothing. Drappo means cloth and abito signals suit or dress.

Poi si rivolse, e parve di coloro che corrono a Verona il drappo verde per la campagna; e parve di costoro

And then he turned and seemed like one of those who race across the fields to win the green cloth at Verona; of those runners, he look up this custom, (Inferno 15.121-123)

179

contaminated cloth: “ma ancora il toccare i panni o qualunque altra cosa da quegli infermi stata tocca o adoperata pareva seco quella cotale infermità nel toccator transportare” (but any that touched the clothes of the sick or aught else that had been touched or used by them, seemed thereby to contract the disease [Dec.

1.introduzione.15]). First he blames the East; then his indictment becomes more specific, the hand-cloth interaction. Touching the clothes, il toccare i panni, spreads contamination. A gesture, that coordinates prehension and apprehension and was modeled on the Gospels when the woman touches Jesus’ hem, has been perverted by the plague into a mechanism of death.360 Boccaccio equates the sick and the dead, because they are one and the same in the context of the plague, when he reports that animals that touch the garments of the sick or dead soon die. Vividly he describes the destruction a plague victim’s rags cause when they are thrown onto the street: che, essendo gli stracci d'un povero uomo da tale infermità morto gittati nella via publica e avvenendosi a essi due porci, e quegli secondo il lor costume prima molto col grifo e poi co' denti presigli e scossiglisi alle guance, in piccola ora appresso, dopo alcuno avvolgimento, come se veleno avesser preso, amenduni sopra li mal tirati stracci morti caddero in terra.

The rags of a poor man who had died of the disease being strewn about the open street, two hogs came thither, and after, as is their wont, no little trifling with their snouts, took the rags between their teeth and tossed them to and from about their chaps; whereupon, almost immediately, they gave a few turns, and fell down dead, as if by poison, upon the rags which in an evil hour they had disturbed. 361

In the scene, the private immediately becomes public. The man’s most valuable possession, clothing, is completely destroyed by the animals before their untimely demise. Boccaccio lingers on the detailed interaction between body and clothes and

360 “Luke 8.43-48.” The New Oxford Annotated Bible: With the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, New Revised Standard Version. Ed. Michael D. Coogan, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

361 Decameron 1.introduzione.18.

180

contaminant because the plague is a threat not just to bodies but also to knowledge circulation and artistic production. Unlike the rags of Dante’s femmina balba and

Boccaccio’s plague victim, other textiles experience an afterlife in which they are purposefully repurposed. On this salvaging ethos, Stuard notes: “Fashion meant reworking one’s old silver wares into new accessories, retrimming garments, and striving for novel effects out of materials found in home cupboards.”362 We need look no further than the case of Zinevra for an extreme example this type of up-cycling.

The exorbitant cost of new garments surely drove this trend in nonfictional spaces. In Decameron 8.4, a brand new camiscia becomes a central plot device.

Convinced his quest to seduce Monna Piccarda will be easy, the Rector of Fiesole makes an essentializing joke: “Se le femine fossero d'argento, elle non varrebbon denaio, per ciò che niuna se ne terrebbe a martello” (Were women of silver, they would not be worth a denier, for there is none but would give under the hammer’ [Dec. 8.4.13]). Instead,

Monna Piccarda bribes her maidservant, Ciutazza, to impersonate her and sleep with him in exchange for a brand-new blouse, an item she would never be able to purchase on her own at her economic station. Ciutazza exclaims: “‘Madonna, se voi mi date una camiscia, io mi gitterò nel fuoco, non che altro’” (‘my lady if you were to give me a blouse, I would be willing to jump into a fire, to say the least’ [Dec. 8.4.24]). In fact she would be willing to do much more: “La Ciutazza disse: ‘Sí dormirò io con sei, non che con uno, se bisognerà.’ ”(‘Sleep with a man!’ quoth Ciutazza: ‘why, if need be, I will sleep with six’

[Dec. 8.4.26]). The economics of textile acquisition becomes abundantly clear.

362 Stuard, Susan Mosher. Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy. Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, 11. 181

Second-hand clothing blurs the borders between bodies and clothing over the axis of time. In Decameron 2.2, thieves disguised as merchants rob Rinaldo d’Asti on his return home from business in Bologna on the road to Castel Giuglielmo. They take everything, leaving him with nothing but a shirt, in camiscia lasciato. He is rescued by the Marquis Azzo’s widow and the three form a love triangle of sorts; the dead Marquis represented by his former clothing, the widow, and Rinaldo. Taking a bath and putting on the Marquis’ clothes make Rinaldo feel as if he has returned from the dead, but the baptism/resurrection motif is perhaps better inhabited by the clothes themselves, unworn since the Marquis’ death. The clothes fit Rinaldo to perfection; they re-activate the widow’s erotic life in the privacy of her castle and re-animate the figure of her husband to obscure her rendezvous with Rinaldo.363 To conceal the tryst she sends him home disguised in rags. He is able to catch the thieves and gain restitution.364

Textiles find new life in revived in applications, a material resurrection. In this chapter, I have explored the making and the unmaking of cloth fabric, primarily through an examination of weaving, wrapping, and disintegrating. For Dante, weaving offers a unique opportunity in which to explore the relationship between form and content. A material and technique’s affordances in many ways limit and restrict what can be created and designed from it. At the same time, out of limitations and constriction, creativity emerges: two sides of the same fabric.

363 Stallybrass and Jones’ work on clothes as constituting the person provide a helpful lens for this novella. Jones, Ann Rosalind, and Peter Stallybrass. Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

364 "Gli fu restituito il suo cavallo, i panni, e i denair ne ne perde altro che un paio di cintolini" (Rinaldo's horse was restored to him, as were also his clothes and money; so that he lost nothing except a pair of garters [Dec. 2.2.41]). 182

In conclusion, I return to my opening observation about the respective tool kits of

Dante in Inferno 20 and Boccaccio in the proemio of the Decameron. The inclusion and exclusion of spuola from their respective lists of textile tools reveal each author’s relationship with textiles in their text. Dante’s inclusion of the spuola broadens his exploration of production to countless other practices. But making, for Dante, is always related to his own project of writing. Weaving techniques uncover a different approach to the Piccarda passage: one that privileges the interplay between accident and design. The design and structure of luxury silk cloths reveal a material and Florentine attribution of fraud in the depiction of Geryon. Yet, Boccaccio’s inverse recapitulation of the Tartar cloths transforms that spectacular artistry into an accident. Pairing embodied similes with textile metaphors, Dante shows dressing to be an essential human practice capable of decoding and clarifying mystifying concepts. Boccaccio’s exclusion of spuola makes his list of tools spinning-specific. This maneuver highlights how Boccaccio uses the category of gender to interrogate all categories. Finally, wrapping practices reify beginnings, transitions, and endings. From Dante’s chrysalis swathed in its own silk to Boccaccio’s zendado enveloping Gabriotto’s corpse, death and decay have been intricately woven into each step of creation and production. The depiction of a pauper’s rags reminds us that all material—even luxury cloth created by the most skilled artisans—returns to dust: a natural disintegration that is a necessary part of our human experience.

183

Conclusion

This dissertation provides an innovative approach to the representation of textiles in Dante’s Commedia and Boccaccio’s Decameron, one rooted in close textual analysis and a robust examination of the material practices of production embedded in the social matrix. In chapter one, I described the economic and social strength of the textile industry in Trecento Florence, powered first by wool and then silk, including a pivotal turn towards luxury production. Wool is aligned with the local and silk with the exotic in the cultural imaginary. A closer look at the historical context reveals a global trading network and elite level of luxury production associated with wool and a surprising amount of social mobility connected with silk production. These complex relationships provided ample opportunity for nuance for Dante and Boccaccio in their representation of textiles.

Next, I examined the cyclical and fluctuating character of raw materials, their affordances, and their location in the social-relational matrix focusing on linen, wool, and silk. I showed how Dante uses linen to connect to metaphor and how Boccaccio exploits the sensory properties of linen to propel a narrative. I demonstrated how Boccaccio uses his knowledge about the segmentation of wool quality to critique social categories, always pushing boundaries. Then I showed how, through the deployment of a series of female protagonists performing silk handiwork in the Mediterranean, Boccaccio explores agency, connects craft making to cultural fluency, and transgresses categories.

In chapter two, I examined the special relationship between a practitioner and their materials, connected through tool use. I applied Raymond Tallis’ conception of the hand as the master tool of prehension and apprehension in Dante’s figuring of the hand in

Purgatorio. I explored the cultural hierarchy within textile arts under the lens of

184

marginalization and then analyzed the generic artisan in the Commedia, finding that

Dante uses the concept of the artisan to characterize figures from the humble craftsperson to and even, Dante himself.

Using Tim Ingold’s definition of skilled practice to recuperate the performative aspects of tool use, I analyzed the specific tools enumerated in Inferno 20 and recapitulated with modification by Boccaccio in the proemio of the Decameron. Working in reverse order, I first examined the spindle and representations of spinning in the text.

By comparing the historical record with contemporary artistic representations, I was able to better evaluate the depictions of spinning by Dante and Boccaccio in their respective texts. The act of making, particularly privileged in religious art, was often buried in the historical documentation. I selected four novelle from the Decameron to reveal

Boccaccio’s non-essentializing treatment of spinners, an underrepresented (in the literary canon) group. The needle launched a double nested investigation into the role and tools of the tailor. Dante uses the needle to facilitate his ontological quest and the tools of the tailor to communicate the mysterious workings of the universe. The tailor’s work is characterized by physicality and intimacy. I uncovered how Dante and Boccaccio use the socially unstable role of the tailor to opposing literary aims: recognition and disguise. I used Berndt’s view of sewing as a cultural interference with narrative to finalize the exploration of the needle. Part tailoring and part domestic handiwork, the hem resists easy categorization and like its definition functions as a liminal, border space. This chapter closes with an exploration of the hem as technique. Using the terms limbo, margini, orlo, and vivagno I showed how Dante carves a path from craft production to literary production and ultimately uses the terms to critique texts, rather than textiles.

185

In chapter three, I showed how weaving provides a lens for Dante to wrestle with issues of destiny and transgression. By examining the production practices I show how the specter of fraudulence is always embedded in quality control and concomitant with concerns for authenticity. The deployment of Tartar cloths in the mimetic comparison in the Geryon episode uncovers a uniquely local valence of fraud in the mercantile culture of Tuscany and Boccaccio’s satirical riff on Tartar Cloths in Decameron 6.10. My analysis of the wrapping and reliquary practices in Decameron 6.10 revealed connections between Dante’s Piccarda and Boccaccio’s Andreuola. These practices led the reader to the inevitable end of textiles, disintegration.

Reflection on Methodology

Organizing the content of this dissertation by material and practice allowed for a deep investigation into the processes of making that saturated the culture in which these texts were composed. The organization also facilitated hidden connections across and between texts united by this methodology. In chapter one, focusing on raw materials connected Dante and Boccaccio in unique and meaningful ways, particularly in the examination of linen. Similarly, by focusing on wool classification in the Decameron, the novelle began to cluster on other axes together, such as the hypocrisy of priests.

Investigating Dante’s hem lexicon opened up the entire Commedia while maintaining a targeted focus on linguistic development. Dante’s borrowing from vernacular algebraic treatises and municipal documents meta-performs the cross-pollination Wayne Storey associates with marginalia.365 In chapter three, the analysis of Tartar cloths drew

365 Storey, Wayne H. Visual Poetics Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric. New York: Garland, 1993.

186

attention to the circulation of design motifs, adding gravitas to Boccaccio’s insertion of a parrot in his Tartar cloth satire in Decameron 6.10.

Next Steps

There are various potential applications and directions for future development. I have only begun to explore the numerous representations of textiles and textile-adjacent material within the texts under study. I will continue to mine the database I created for this study for future research. Moments like the sparkling cloaks of Frate Godenti in the

Inferno and the dressing and undressing of Griselda in the Decameron demand this exact approach. I have deconstructed the making of textiles into categories that fit my narrative: materials, techniques or craftsmanship, and the liminal state of (un) becoming cloth. In an object-oriented approach, I will examine the representation of a finished object from the points of view of these component parts and others. For future projects, the scope will be widened to additional works by these two authors, particularly Dante’s earlier poetry, rich with textile related imagery and Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris, because of the primacy of women and textiles. Further, by broadening the material range to other craft modalities I will examine, for instance, Dante’s Tenzone with Forese Donati. Envisioning the literary scope as the x-axis and the material-historical lens as the y-axis, I will define the z-axis by a further exploration of hands-on making, spinning and weaving, in an effort to further blur the role of practitioner-maker-writer.

187

References

Albers, Anne. On Weaving. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Alighieri, Dante. Convivio, Digital Dante.

digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/library/convivio-italian. Accessed 5 August 2019.

---. Convivio, Translated by Richard Lansing. Digital Dante.

digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/library/convivio-italian/. Accessed 5 August 2019.

---. Inferno. Ed. Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi. Milan: Mondadori, 2012.

---. Inferno. Translated by Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Dell, 2004.

---. Paradiso. Ed. Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi. Milan: Mondadori, 2012.

---. Paradiso. Translated by Madelbaum. New York: Bantam Dell, 2004.

---. Purgatorio. Ed. Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi. Milan: Mondadori, 2012.

---. Purgatorio. Trans. Madelbaum. New York: Bantam Dell, 2004.

Baert, Barbara. “Hem.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed.Anika Reineke, Emsdetten:

Edition Imorde, 2017, 141-144.

Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the

Neolithic and Bronze Ages with special reference to the Aegean. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1992.

Barolini, “Commento Baroliniano.“ Commedia. Digital Dante.

digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/. Accessed 10 August 2017.

---. “Dante's Sympathy for the Other, or the Non-Stereotyping

Imagination: Sexual and Racialized Others in the Commedia.” Critica del Testo

14, 2011, 177-204.

---. “Inferno 15: Winners and Losers in the Race of Life.” Commento Baroliniano,

188

Digital Dante. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2017.

digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/inferno-15.

---. “Le parole son donne e i fatti son maschi: Toward a Sexual Poetics of the Decameron

(Decameron 2.10)” Studi sul Boccaccio, Vol. 21, 1993, 175-197.

---. “Only Historicize: History, Material Culture, and the Future of Dante Studies.” Dante

Studies, no. 127, 2009, 37-54.

---. “Paradiso 2: The Marks of Cain.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante. New York,

NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2014.

digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/paradiso/paradiso-2/.

---. “Purgatorio 24: Making Literary History.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante.

New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2017.

digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/purgatorio/purgatorio-24.

---. “Sociology of the Brigata: Gendered Groups in Dante, Forese, Folgore, Boccaccio —

From ‘Guido, i’ vorrei’ to Griselda,” Italian Studies, 67:1, 2012, 4 -22.

---. “ ‘Sotto Benda’: The Women of Dante’s Canzone ‘Doglia Mi Reca’ in the Light of

Cecco d’Ascoli.” Dante Studies, no. 123, 2005, 83–88.

---. The Undivine Comedy:Detheologizing Dante. Princeton University Press, 1992.

Benassuti, Luigi. Cited from the commentary to Purgatorio 13.82-84.

(Verona: G. Civelli, 184), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project,

Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

Bertuccioli, Giuliano. “Tartari.” Treccani.it. Enciclopedia Dantesca, 1970. Web.

Accessed 7 March 2018.

189

Bischoff, Bernhard. Latin Paleography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Translated by

Daibi O Croinin and David Ganz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Boccaccio, Giovanni. Cited from the commentary on Inferno, XVII.16-17

(Mondadori: Milano, 1965), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project,

Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

---. Decameron. Ed. Vittore Branca. Milan: Mondadori, 2009.

---.Decameron. Translated by G. H. McWilliam. London: Penguin Group, 1995.

---.Genealogia Deorum Gentilium. Guis. Bari: Laterza & Figli, 1951.

Brandner, Christine. “Knot.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed.Anika Reineke. Emsdetten:

Edition Imorde, 2017, 151.

Bray, Francesca. “Women’s Work and Women’s Place.” Technology and Gender

Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1997.

Bremmer, Rolf H., and Sarah Larratt Keefer Eds. Signs on the Edge: Space, Text and

Margin in Medieval Manuscripts. Leuven: Peeter’s Publishers, 2007.

Brigandí, Ottavio. “Nero lucente e profondo. Un ’ipotesi sul color perso.” Bollettino

Dantesco per il settimo centinario, 5 settembre 2016, 9-26.

Burns, E. Jane. Courtly Love Undressed. Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French

Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, 16.

Buti, Francesca da. Cited from the commentary to “Paradiso 16.” (Pisa: Fratelli Nistri,

1862), as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

Bynum, Carolyn Walker. Christian Materiality.An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval

Europe. New York: MIT Press, 2015.

190

Castelvetro, Ludovico. Cited from Commentary to “Inferno 17.”

(Modena: Società tipografica, 1886), as found in the Darmouth Dante Project.

“Characteristics of Hemp.” Oecotextiles. 02 June 2010.

oecotextiles.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/characteristics-of-hemp. Accessed 10

January 2018.

Checcoli, Ippolita. “La arte della lana gentile fra Duecento e Trecento: uomini e

produzione.” dpm quaderni, 2008, 255.

Christoffersen, Nynne Just. “Dye.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reinek.

Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017.

Cleland, Elizabeth. “Tapestry.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke.

Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017.

Colicchi, Calogero. “Drappi.” Treccani.it. Enciclopedia Dantesca, 1970. Web. 7 March

2018.

Costa, Paolo. Cited from the commentary to “Purgatorio 13.82-84.” Firenze: Fabris,

1840, as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

Crowfoot, Elisabeth Francis Pritchard, and Kay Staniland. Textiles and Clothing c.1150-

1450. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2001.

Dalton, Heather, et al. "Frederick II of Hohenstaufen's Australasian Cockatoo: Symbol of

Detente between East and West and Evidence of the Ayyubids' Global

Reach." Parergon, vol. 35 no. 1, 2018, 35-60.

Ehmer, Joseph and Catharina Lis. The Idea of Work in Europe from Antiquity to Modern

Times. Burlington:Ashgate Publishing, 2009.

Fanelli. Rosalia Bonito. Five centuries of italian Textiles: 1300-1800 A selection from

191

the Museo Del Tessuto Prato. Prato: Cassa Di Risparmi e Depositi Di Prato,

1981.

Field, Anne. Spinning Wool: Beyond the Basics. London: Trafalgar Square, 2010.

Fosca, Nicola. Cited from the commentary to “Inferno, XVII.16-17” as found in the

Dartmouth Dante Project, Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

Franceschi, Franco. “Lane permesse e lane proibite nella Toscana fiorentina dei secoli

XIV-XV: logiche economiche e scelte ‘politiche.’ ” La pastorizia mediterranea.

Storia e diritto (secoli XI-XX), Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Alghero, 8-11

novembre 2006), Edited by Antonello Mattone and Pinuccia F. Simbula. Rome:

Carocci, 2011.

Franceschi, Franco. “Wool in 14th Century Florence. The Affirmation of an Important

Luxury Production.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence Wool, Silk,

Painting. Florence: Giunti Editore S.p.A., 2017.

Franceschi, Franco. “Woollen Luxury Cloth in Late Medieval Italy.” Europe’s Rich

Fabric The Consumption, Commercialisation, and Production of Luxury Textiles

in Italy, the Low Countries, and Neighboring Territories (Fourteenth-Sixteenth

Centuries) Ed. Bart Lambert and Katherine Ann Wilson. New York: Routledge,

2016.

Frick, Carole. Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.

Ganz, David. “Recto/Verso.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reinek. Emsdetten:

Edition Imorde, 2017, 197-200.

Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press,

192

1998.

---. The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams. New Brunswick: Athione Press,

1999.

Gilbert, Rosalie. “Medieval Fabrics & Sewing.” Rosalie’s Medieval Woman.

rosaliegilbert.com/fabricsandsewing.html.

Goldwaithe, Richard. “The Florentine Wool Industry in the Late Sixteenth Century: A

Case Study.” Journal of European Economic History. 32 (Winter2003): 527-54.

Herlihy, David. Medieval Households. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1985.

Houghteling, Sylvia. “Silk.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten:

Edition Imorde, 2017, 225-229.

Hourihane, Colum P. Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture. New York:

Oxford University Press, 2012.

Immonen, Visa. “Folding and Wrapping the Sacred: Living With Late Medieval Relics

and Reliquaries in Europe.“ Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bard Graduate Center, New

York City. 9 April 2018. Lecture.

Imola, Benvenuto da. Cited from the commentary to “Paradiso 16.49-51.” Florence: G.

Barbèra, 1887, as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project. Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

Iovino, Serenella and Serpil Oppermann. Ed. Material Ecocriticism. Bloomington:

Indiana Press, 2014.

Ingold, Tim. “Materials against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues. vol. 14, no. 1,

2007, 1–16.

---. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Rutledge, 2000.

193

Jacoby, David. “Silk Production:” The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. Ed.

Elizabeth Jeffries, John F. Haldon, Robin Cormack. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1991, 458-460.

---. “The Movement of Silk and Silk Textiles Italy and the Mediterranean in

the 12th-14th Centuries.” Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence. Wool,

Silk, Painting, Ed. Cecilie Hillberg. Florence: Giunti, 2017, 18–29.

Johnstone, Pauline. High Fashion in the Church: The Place of Church Vestments in the

History of Art from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. London: Manyey

Publishing, 2002.

Jones, Ann Rosalind and Peter Stallybrass. Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of

Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Lange-Berndt, Petra. “Sewing.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed.Anika Reineke,

Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 221-224.

LeGoff, Jacques. Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages. Translated by Arthur

Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Lehmann, Ann-Sophie. “The Matter of the Medium. Some Tools for an Art Theoretical

Interpretation of Materials.“ The Matter of Art: Materials, Technologies,

Meanings 1200-1700, Ed. C. Anderson, A. Dunlop, P. H. Smith. Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 2015.

Lehninger, Anna. “Marginalization.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke.

Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017.

Leone, Massimo. “Wrapping Transcendence: The Semiotics of Reliquaries.” Signs and

194

Society, vol. 2, no. S1 (Supplement 2014),

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/674314.

Levi-Pisetzky, Rosita. Storia del Costume.Vol.2. Milano: Istituto editoriale italiano,

1964. 2:201–09.

Lombardi, Baldassare. Cited from the commentary to “Purgatorio 13.82-84.”

Roma: A. Fulgoni, 1791, as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project,

Dante.Dartmouth.EDU

Long, Pamela. Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400-1600.

Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2011, 4.

“Luke 8.43-48.” The New Oxford Annotated Bible: With the

Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, New Revised Standard Version, Ed.

Michael D. Coogan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Mamidipudi, Annapurna and Wiebe E. Bijker. “Innovation in Indian Handloom

Weaving.” Technology and Culture, Volume 59, Number 3, (July 2018), 509-545.

Mamidipudi, Annapurna, et al. “Mobilising Discourses: Handloom as sustainable socio-

technology,” Economic & Political Weekly, no. 47 (25), (2012), 41-51.

Miller, Maureen C. Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–

1200. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.

Monnas, Lisa. Merchants, Princes, and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern

Paintings, 1300-1550. New Haven: Yale University Press, (2008), 51.

Monnas, Lisa. Renaissance Velvets. London: V&A Publishing, 2012.

Monnas, Lisa. ”Silk Cloths Purchased for the Great Wardrobe of the Kings of England,

1325–1462.” Textile History. 20:2, 283-307.

195

Munro, John H. “The Rise, Expansion, and Decline of the Italian Wool-Based Cloth

Industries, 1100–1730: A Study in International Competition, Transaction Costs,

and Comparative Advantage.” Studies in Medieval Renaissance History. 3.9

(2012): 45-207.

Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina. Guardaroba medievale. Vesti e societá dal XIII al XVI

secolo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999, 298.

Nomoto, Kyoko. “Wrapping.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke

Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017, 310.

Olson, Kristina. “Shoes, Gowns and Turncoats: Reconsidering Cacciaguida’s History of

Florentine Fashion and Politics.” Dante Studies, Volume 134, (2016), 26-47.

Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms. Los Angeles: J. Paul

Getty Museum, 2011.

Piponnier, Francoise and Perrine Mane. Dress in the Middle Ages. Translated by Caroline

Beamish. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

Pitman, Sophie. “Reconstructing the Renaissance.” Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bard

Graduate Center, New York City. 30 April 2019. Lecture.

Pitman, Sophie. “Sampling tailor’s techniques—launching the experimental phase.“

Refashioning the Renaissance. refashioningrenaissance.eu/sampling-tailors-

techniques-launching-the-experiments/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2019.

Postrel, Virginia. “How Textiles Repeatedly Revolutionised Human Technology.” Aeon

Essays, 5 June 2015, aeon.co/essays/how-textiles-repeatedly-revolutionised-

human-technology. Accessed 19 July 2019.

Reineke, Anika. “Screen” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Ed. Anika Reineke. Emsdetten:

196

Edition Imorde, 2017, 215-219.

Reineke, Anika. Ed. Textile Terms: A Glossary. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 2017.

Riello, Giorgio. Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Rockeller, Laurel A. “Parrots and Popinjays: a Brief Look at the Role of Companion

Birds in Medieval Europe.” Laurel A. Rockefeller Biographical Historian, 24 July

2014, peersofbeinan.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/parrots-and-popinjays-a-

brief-look-at-the-role-of-companion-birds-in-medieval-europe/. Accessed 22 July

2019.

Romaní, J. and M. Romaní. “Causas y curas de las dermatosis en la obra de Hildegarda

de Bingen.” ACTAS Dermo-Sifiliográficas. 108(6), Jul-Aug 2017; 538-543.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

Sarti, Rafaella. Europe at home: family and material culture, 1500-1800. Translated by

Allan Cameron. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Serravalle, Johannis de. Cited from the commentary to “Paradiso 16.49-51.” Prati:

Giachetti, 1891, as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project,

Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

Smith, Pamela H. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific

Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

---. The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250-1750.

Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015.

Storey, Wayne H. Visual Poetics Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian

Lyric. New York: Garland, 1993.

197

Stuard, Susan Mosher. Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century

Italy. Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Tallis, Raymond. A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being. Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press, 2003.

---. Michaelangelo’s Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence

New Haven, Yale University Press, 2010.

Tognetti, Sergio. “Florentine Economy between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.”

Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence Wool, Silk, Painting. Florence:

Giunti Editore S.p.A., 2017, 30-42.

---. “Origins of the Arte della Seta” Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century

Florence. Wool, Silk, Painting. (Giunti Editore S.p.A.), 53-63.

---. Un’industria di lusso al servizio del grande commercio. Il mercato dei

drappi serici e della seta nella Firenze del Quattrocento. (Florence: Villa I Tatti,

2012).

Tasso, Torquato. Cited from the commentary to “Purgatorio 13.82-84.” Pisa: Co'

Caratteri di F. Didot, 1830, as found in the Dartmouth Dante Project,

Dante.Dartmouth.EDU.

Toynbee, Paget. Dante Studies and Researches. London: Methuen and Co., 1902,115.

Toynbee, Paget. “Tartar Cloths (Inferno, XVII, 14).” Romania, tome 29 n°116, (1900),

559-564.

Usher, Jonathan. “Simona and Pasquino: ‘Cur Moriatur Homo Cui Salvia Crescit in

Horto?’" MLN Vol. 106, No. 1, (1991), 1-14.

Vanhove, Pieter. “Dante, the European Cloth Trade, and the Battle of the Golden Spurs.”

198

Digital Dante, 2018, digitaldante.columbia.edu/history/vanhove-battle-

goldenspurs/.

Visco, Julianna, and Emogene Cataldo. “Oyster Shells.” BnF Ms. Fr. 640 A Digital

Critical Edition.

Warr, Cordelia. Dressing for Heaven. Religious Clothing in Italy 1215-1545.

Manchester: Manchester University Press, 185.

Watt, James C. Y., and Anne E. Wardwell. When Silk Was Gold: Central Asian and

Chinese Textiles. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997, 214.

Weaver, Elissa. “Dietro il vestito: La semiotica del vestire nel Decameron.” La novella

italiana. Atti del convegno di Caprarola, 19– 24 settembre 1988. Roma: Salerno.

701–710.

Weaver, Elissa. “Fashion and Fortune in the Decameron.” Boccaccio 1313– 2013. F.

Ciabattoni, E. Filosa and K. Olson, Eds. Ravenna: Longo, 2015. 71– 87.

Wong, Alan. When Theory and Practice Meet: Understanding Translation through

Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.

Zschocke, Nina. “Tactility.” Textile Terms: A Glossary, Reineke, Anika. Ed. Emsdetten:

Edition Imorde, 2017, 247-251.

199