The Lucrative Silk Industry

From the 14th century to their conquest by Napoleon in 1797, Venice was one of Europe’s largest producers and traders of silk. As European demand for silk increased throughout the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, Venice strove to meet that demand through their production of silks that were well-made, though certainly not as high quality as Chinese silks, and featured popular designs drawn from the rich corpus of Silk Roads imagery and symbolism. Through their engagement in silk production, Venice established a steady stream of revenue that continued to supply the Republic with wealth and political cache long after they began to decline in the 16th century.

Styles and Techniques

This particular silk fragment, today kept in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, was produced some time in the late 13th or 14th centuries when the Venetian silk industry was first beginning to take off. The manufacturer is unknown, but it was likely made by a member of one of Venice’s silk weaving guilds or perhaps a member of the single unified guild following the 1347 merger of Venice’s three silk guilds. It is primarily made of silk though interwoven with twill and gold thread. The use of twill belies Western techniques of debasing silks with lesser threads to lower production costs; a technique that would have shocked contemporaries in Song China. Nonetheless, these silks came to dominate the European markets as they were still seen as high being of a high enough quality to European consumers.

Roundels and Imagery

This silk also features a roundel design with facing griffin in red and cream colors. Roundel designs were common for silks across Eurasia for centuries. Silk weavers from China, Central Asia, Persia, and elsewhere along the Silk Roads from at least the Early Middle Ages popularized these roundel designs and they continued to be popular in these places as well as in the Byzantine Empire and Western Europe. These roundels also commonly featured mythological creatures like the griffins of this silk in addition to dragons, basilisks, and other such fantastical beasts. The griffin had particularly special meaning in Venice as the symbol of the city and its patron saint was the Winged Lion of Saint Mark. As such, it is interesting to see how the global commodity of silk and the global program of imagery of the roundel were imbued with local Venetian meanings.

Meanings and Depictions

It is unknown where this silk fragment would have been displayed or if it was used as clothing, but it appears to take the form of either a carpet or a wall tapestry. Venice produced several silk tapestries that still exist in good condition today. Many featured roundel patterns while others featured more floral, Byzantine-inspired designs. Venetian Renaissance artists were also known to paint silk tapestries in the backgrounds of their works, such as with Titian’s Venus of Urbino and Gentile Bellini’s The Annunciation. Such depictions of silk not only serve as means for talented artists to show off their high levels of skill, but also demonstrated the wealth of the patron commissioning the artwork. In much the same way that fine silks were status symbols in China, they were similarly used as such for Venice’s patrician class.

Conclusions: A Transformative Industry

The silk industry in Venice was in many ways grafted both from other Italian silk industries in places like Sicily and Lucca as well as more broadly from the Islamic World and China. However, their business acumen allowed them to expand their industrial capabilities such that were able to corner the European silk market, though Eastern-made silks continued to be quite popular. Venice was thus very much a Silk Roads city in the way that they used Silk Roads commodities and industries to grow their wealth and power.

Bibliography

• Jacoby, David. “Silk Economics and Cross-Cultural Artistic Interaction: Byzantium, the Muslim World, and the Christian West.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58 (2004): 197-240.
• McCall, Timothy. “Materials for Renaissance Fashion.” Renaissance Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2017): 1449-1464.
• Molà, Luca. The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.