Renaissance Studies Vol. 20 No.

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Renaissance
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2006 Allerston
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childbirth,
Key words: furnishings, methodology, merchant, sumptuary

‘Contrary to the truth and also to the semblance

of reality’? Entering a Venetian ‘lying-in’
chamber (1605)

Patricia Allerston

For Renaissance historians, entering the domestic sphere is an immensely

difficult enterprise. The available evidence is not only scarce and uneven, but
it is also problematic. While first-hand descriptions of domestic interiors,
such as Fra Sabba da Castiglione’s well-known account, are immensely impor-
tant, they are so rare that their validity as evidence of general practice has to
be questioned.1 Contemporary treatises on household management, such as
Leon Battista Alberti’s famous essay Della Famiglia, can also prove useful, but
they too require careful handling because they do not discuss actual domestic
interiors.2 Images have proved to be another valuable source of information
to domestic-interior specialists. However, their analysis also involves important
methodological considerations that need to be addressed.3 In short, should
we expect the well-dressed bed, wall-hangings, sculpted mantelpiece, firedog
and upturned ‘pisspot’ depicted in a dramatic seventeenth-century print of
a bedroom (Fig. 1), for example, to be reliable representations of interior
furnishings? We appear to be on much firmer ground with probate inventories
and it is no coincidence that this form of evidence has informed some of the
most convincing studies of Renaissance domestic interiors in recent years.4
Yet even these valuable archival sources can pose problems. Care needs to
be exercised when deploying such information to reconstruct the ‘normal’

1
On Sabba di Castiglione’s account, see Dora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience
in Renaissance Italy (New Haven & London, 1997), 106–113.
2
Leon Battista Alberti, I libri della famiglia (1427), ed. R. Romano and Alberto Tenenti (Turin, 1969).
3
See, for example, the magisterial study by Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior 1400–1600
(London, 1991). On p. 17 the advantages of using contemporary illustrations are highlighted, and the
disadvantages given short shrift.
4
See Anton Schuurman and A. M. Van de Woude, eds, Probate Inventories: A New Source for the Historical Study
of Wealth, Material Culture and Agricultural Development, AAG Bijdragen series, no. 23 (Wageningen, 1980). Two
classic Venetian examples are Paola Pavanini, ‘Abitazioni popolari e borghesi nella Venezia cinquecentesca’,
Studi Veneziani, n.s., 5 (1981), 63–126; and Isabella Palumbo-Fossati, ‘L’interno della casa dell’artigiano e
dell’artista nella Venezia del cinquecento’, Studi Veneziani, n.s., 8 (1984), 109–53. Evidence from inventories
also informs Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (New Haven & London, 2004).

© 2006 The Author

Journal compilation © 2006 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd
630 Patricia Allerston

Fig. 1 Arouses jealousy and is the cause of arguments and wounds, c. 1650, from the anonymous series The Life
and Miserable End of the Prostitute (Bologna: Giuseppe Longhi, n.d.), No. 7 (Reproduced by permission of the
Civica Raccolta delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli, Milan [SPP m11–F11])

appearance of domestic interiors, since they usually give a snapshot of a

person’s possessions at a particular moment in time, often when their
household is in an abnormal state after that person’s death.5
Methodological issues such as these lie behind this paper, which emphasizes
the difficulties facing the historian of household interiors.6 Its purpose is
quite simple: to stress the importance of understanding the circumstances in
which historical sources for domestic arrangements were generated, as well
as their original functions. We shall see that while such knowledge may
help us to draw convincing conclusions about domestic interiors, it can also

5
For examples, see Patricia Allerston, ‘Reconstructing the Second-hand Clothes Trade in Sixteenth- and
Seventeenth-century Venice’, Costume, 33 (1999), 50.
6
An initial version of this paper was presented at the conference Novelty, Trade and Exchange in the Renais-
sance Interior, organized by the AHRB Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior, at the Victoria and Albert
Museum in June 2003. I am grateful to Marta Ajmar, Flora Dennis and Ann Matchette for inviting me to
reproduce that short paper within this special issue.
 Entering a Venetian ‘lying-in’ chamber 631
encourage us to exercise caution when forming definitive opinions. Two
archival documents are central to this discussion and will be introduced in
turn: a denunciation to the Venetian sumptuary officials about excessive
display within a merchant’s home, and a personal rejoinder by that merchant
which categorically refutes the allegation. Both documents date from 1605
and are, like Fra Sabba da Castiglione’s account, rare survivals.7 Unfortunately,
we do not know the outcome of the case. Each of these records appears to
offer a valuable insight into a Venetian domestic interior on an important
festive occasion – the birth of a child. However, they give contradictory views
of that interior. While it is tempting to determine which document is the
most trustworthy, so that the precious evidence it contains can be deployed,
in-depth analysis of the sources encourages us to question whether either of
them takes us into a real domestic interior at all.8

ZUANE’S DENUNCIATION

On 18 January 1605, a functionary called Zuane denounced a Venetian

wool merchant to the sumptuary authorities.9 Zuane was the captain of a small
group of petty officials called fanti who worked for the Venetian sumptuary
magistrates. The merchant was a certain Vincenzo Zuccato. Zuccato lived in
the San Vidal neighbourhood of Venice, an area now known for its proximity
to the modern Accademia Bridge, which is one of the few means of crossing
the Grand Canal today (Fig. 2). Those familiar with the Venetian artist
Canaletto’s paintings will know the area for another reason, since it features
prominently in one of that artist’s most popular works, ‘The Stonemason’s Yard’
(1727–28, National Gallery, London).10
Zuane denounced Zuccato for receiving female visitors at his house to
celebrate the birth of a child.11 Apparently, the functionary had gone to
Zuccato’s residence two days earlier with his men. He reported seeing an
elaborately decorated camera del parto or ‘ room of the birth’ there – which,
in seventeenth-century English would probably have been called a ‘lying-in

7
Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV), Provveditori e Sopraprovveditori alle Pompe (Pompe), busta 6, fascicolo I,
Denuncie 1604–1734. These documents are part of a mixture of papers contained within a single file. Zuc-
cato’s case is the only seventeenth-century denunciation in the file. Such examples of enforcement, within
the Venetian capital, are scarce, and have rarely been discussed.
8
I am indebted to discussions with my ex-colleague, Cordelia Beattie, whose critical approach to fifteenth-
century English Chancery petitions has informed this paper.
9
ASV, Pompe, busta 6, Denuncie, 18 Jan. 1604 more veneto (mv).
10
See David Bomford and Gabriele Finaldi, Venice Through Canaletto’s Eyes (London, 1998), 42–7. The
painting’s proper title is Venice: Campo S. Vidal and Santa Maria della Carità.
11
ASV, Pompe, busta 6, Denuncie, 18 Jan. 1604 (mv): ‘P[er] haver acetato donne p[er] visitation del parto
della sua consorte’.
632 Patricia Allerston

Fig. 2 Giacomo Franco, View of Venice, nd (c. 1600) with San Vidal neighbourhood marked (Reproduced with
kind permission of the Director of the Musei Civici Veneziani)

chamber’.12 According to Zuane, this lying-in chamber was furnished with

silk, figured tapestries which reached from the floor to the ceiling, engraved
and gilded walnut chests decorated with bronze fittings, a gilded iron
bedstead furnished with embroidered sheets, and an elaborate yellow
damask bed canopy.13
Inviting female relatives, neighbours and friends to celebrate the joyous
event of a child’s birth was typical in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy, as
elsewhere.14 Whereas baptisms were usually held in public and featured men
in prominent roles, parti, the social receptions held after a birth, during a
12
See Adrian Wilson, ‘The ceremony of childbirth and its interpretation’, in Women as Mothers in Pre-
industrial England: Essays in Memory of Dorothy McLaren, ed. Valerie Fildes (London, 1990), 73, 75. The term
‘confinement room’ is also used.
13
ASV, Pompe, busta 6, Denuncie, 18 Jan. 1604 (mv): ‘. . . razzi di seda a figure alti da terra fino sotto al
soffito’ and ‘cassi di noghera intagliade et dorade con lavori di bronzo’. The bed canopy is described as a
‘pavion’.
14
Little in-depth research has been undertaken on these festivities. The most thorough recent discussion
of the practices in Italy is Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New
Haven, 1999). On Venice, see Nascere a Venezia dalla Serenissima alla Prima Guerra (Milan, nd). On French and
English practices, see Karen L. Fresco, ‘Gendered household spaces in Christine de Pizan’s Livre des trois
vertus’, in The Medieval Household in Christian Europe c.850–c.1550: Managing Power, Wealth and the Body, ed.
Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic and Sarah Rees Jones (Turnhout, 2003), 191–4; and Wilson, ‘The ceremony
of childbirth’, 68–107.
 Entering a Venetian ‘lying-in’ chamber 633
new mother’s ‘lying-in’ or ‘confinement’ period, occurred at home and were
the preserve of women.15 Little is known about these gender-specific domestic
events, but, as with weddings, special efforts seem to have been made to
create festive environments for the occasions. Indeed, in her pioneering
book about the art and culture associated with childbirth in Renaissance
Italy, Jacqueline Musacchio described the festivities as being ‘elaborately
accessorized’, particularly in Venice.16
The Venetian writer, Francesco Sansovino, published a typically laudatory
description of the material splendour on show at noble Venetian parti:

. . . the ostentation of mothers-in-childbirth is no less [than at weddings]:

in that, during the childbirth ceremony (ceremonia del parto), splendour
and magnificence are displayed in their houses. In rooms richly furnished
and decorated with pictures, sculptures, works of gold and silver, and
other esteemed objects – especially the one in which the woman lies – they
receive female noble friends, and relations, who come to celebrate with
them.17

Sansovino’s account, like Alberti’s treatise mentioned earlier, needs careful

handling, for it is not an exact factual record or report. Yet, other forms of
evidence support Sansovino’s description. A characteristically brief entry in
the Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto’s account book, for example, reveals that
he sent his paintings to decorate the house where his nephew’s daughter
gave birth to her second child.18
The Venetian authorities sought to regulate the ostentatious display of
material wealth at such childbirth receptions, seeing it as a wasteful and
improper use of resources. For example, in 1535 the Venetian Senate targeted
the types of bed furnishings to be used at parti. The Senate decreed that
such furnishings should not be made of cloth of gold or silver, nor of velvet
or damask or the heavy silks known as raso or tabi, but only of the lighter
types of silk known as cendado or ormesin. In addition, the bed sheets

15
On baptisms and childbirth receptions (here called ‘confinement visits’), see Musacchio, The Art and
Ritual of Childbirth, 36, 42–52. On the role of men at Venetian baptisms, see Francesco Sansovino, Venetia Città
Nobilissima (Venice, 1663), 402; and Giulio Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe nella Republica [sic] di Venezia: Studio
Storico (Bologna, 1969), 201–5. On childbirth as a women’s sphere, see Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of
Childbirth, 43; and Mariuccia Giacomini, ‘Il parto in casa: resoconti orali di ostetriche veneziane’, in Nascere a
Venezia, 135; as well as Wilson, ‘The ceremony of childbirth’, 85–88. Wilson (p. 94) gives a detailed introduc-
tion to English women’s confinement period in the seventeenth century, focusing on the lead-up to a birth,
as well as the subsequent period of recuperation. On the early modern Venetian house as a setting for
childbirth, see Giorgio Gianighian, ‘Nascere a Venezia: nascere in casa’, in Nascere a Venezia, 141–6.
16
Musacchio, Art and Ritual of Childbirth, 43–4. On material display at Venetian weddings, see Patricia
Allerston, ‘Wedding finery in sixteenth-century Venice’, in Marriage in Italy 1300–1650, eds. Trevor Dean and
K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge, 1998), 25–40.
17
Sansovino, Venetia Città Nobilissima, 402.
18
Lorenzo Lotto, Il ‘libro di spese diverse’ con aggiunta di lettere e d’altri documenti, ed. Pietro Zampetti (Venice/
Rome, 1969), 237, November 1541; see also ibid., 218, 1543, for another childbirth reference.
634 Patricia Allerston
displayed at these receptions were not meant to be decorated with gold,
silver, silk, or any other sort of needlework.19 Limiting the number of people
attending parti was another focus of such sumptuary legislation. This has
been seen as a clever alternative means of tackling such ostentatious display,
since there was little point in providing an elaborate decorative environment
without an audience to appreciate it.20 Yet given the contemporary ideas
about hospitality, it might equally be said that legislating against sumptuous
display was a clever means of trying to reduce the number of people who
attended these events. To be able to invite people into one’s house for a
festive occasion it had to be suitably furnished.21
The way in which such restrictions against the display of material wealth
at childbirth receptions were supposed to be enforced is very interesting. To
start with, the midwives who assisted at a birth were required to inform the
city’s sumptuary officials when a successful delivery had occurred.22 Once this
had been done, the clerk who received their report was meant to dispatch
the magistrates’ men immediately to the house in question, to forbid the
family from receiving visitors. Having given this ultimatum, the band of petty
officials was expected to return at regular intervals to check that their order
had been observed. The magistrates’ men were empowered to enter and
inspect private properties on such occasions, much like the city’s trades’
officials could do spot checks on artisans’ workshops suspected of illicit craft
activities.23 To sum up, the sumptuary regulations enacted against childbirth
receptions not only expected the poor working women who served as
midwives to inform against their employers, but they also envisaged a group
of petty officials entering Venetians’ houses, including the homes of powerful
nobles and citizens. According to a sumptuary ruling of 1542, the magistrates’

19
Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe, 203–4. See also Doretta Davanzo Poli, ‘L’abbigliamento in gravidanza,
parto, puerperio’, in Nascere a Venezia, 64. Musacchio discusses sumptuary legislation, as well as the Venetian
rules in Art and Ritual of Childbirth, 54 and 56. Cf. Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200–1500
(Oxford, 2002), 39–40, which argues that interior furnishings did not attract much attention prior to 1500.
A useful recent addition to the literature on sumptuary legislation, which includes an essay on the Veneto, is
Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli and Antonella Campanini eds, Disciplinare il Lusso: La Legislazione Suntuaria in
Italia e in Europa tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (Rome, 2003).
20
Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe, 203; see also Davanzo Poli, ‘L’abbigliamento in gravidanza’, 64.
21
See Sansovino, Venetia Città Nobilissima, 384–5. On the term ‘casa aperta’, see Allerston, ‘Wedding finery’,
33. Musacchio, Art and Ritual of Childbirth, 43, also notes the requirement to receive women in a ‘properly
outfitted room’. Venetian sumptuary legislation commonly tackled the symptom rather than the cause of such
ostentation, for example by fining tailors and embroiderers for making over-elaborate clothes, see ASV, Pompe,
busta 1, Capitolare Primo, folio 53v, 21 Jan. 1599 (mv).
22
A Venetian proverb, ‘Dogia passada, comare desmentegada’, suggests that midwives were laid off quickly
after a birth, see Claudia Pancino and Daniela Pillon, ‘La nascita nelle tradizioni popolari veneziane del ‘800’,
in Nascere a Venezia, 127.
23
Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe, 204; see also the decree of 1562 reproduced on 394–400 (395). For a
brief introduction to the system of guild justice in Venice, see Richard Mackenney, Tradesman and Traders: The
World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c.1250–c.1650 (Totowa, New Jersey, 1987), 9–14. For an in-depth study,
including a discussion of workshop inspections, see James Shaw, ‘The scales of justice: law and the balance of
power in the world of the Venetian guilds, 1550–1700’ (unpublished Ph.D. diss., European University Institute,
Florence, 1998), 69–102.
 Entering a Venetian ‘lying-in’ chamber 635
men could even gain entry to the camera del parto itself, in which a vulnerable
new mother was confined.24
The scenario that these rules evoke is reminiscent of the ‘carnivalesque’
situation enacted during plague epidemics, when people from the lowest
echelons of society were feared for the unusual powers they wielded over
their social superiors.25 Taken at face value, Zuane’s denunciation against
Zuccato follows this projected pattern of enforcement: the captain and his
men visited the merchant’s home, and managed to see Madonna Zuccato’s
camera del parto. They apparently caught the merchant in the act of hosting
an illicit childbirth reception. However, the Venetian wool merchant strenuously
denied Zuane’s denunciation. His words were carefully chosen and are worth
citing in full, for they give a very different picture of his wife’s confinement.

ZUCCATO’S REJOINDER

‘The denunciation made on 18 January past, against me, Vincenzo Zuccato,

Your Very Excellent Lordships’ humble servant, is not only contrary to the
truth, but also to the semblance of reality.26 Since, on the occasion of my
wife’s many childbirths, I have never overstepped the boundaries of modesty
and of my limited fortune and social rank, so it is not to be believed that I
have acted any differently during this childbirth (which is the last of seven),
by doing what it has never suited me to do before.27 But this is even more
the case this year, in which my house has been badly hit by fortune, because
of a loss of 1000 ducats through a heavy levy of import duty brought about
by Messer Zuanne Muscorno; and because a good part of my meagre wealth
and possessions is caught up in Aleppo, [and] due to the siege and other
infamous mishaps affecting that city and those lands, I have been unable to
have any dealings with, or news from, there. Another consideration is that
in order to sustain a household of nineteen mouths such as I have, I need
to think about matters other than ostentation or vanity, having barely
enough income to supply food for four months of the year. If it was not for
the hard work and charity of the Excellent Messer Alviso, my uncle, I would
not know how to manage. But, coming to the denunciation, I say that no
women of any kind came to our house that day, except for Madonna Camilla
Rubini, my mother-in-law, nor is it possible to prove otherwise truthfully. As
for the decorative furnishings described in that denunciation, I say this is a
malicious representation (pura calunna) because in my wife’s room there

24
Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe, 395.
25
Brian Pullan, ‘Plague and Perceptions of the Poor in Early Modern Italy’, in Epidemics and Ideas: Essays
on the Historical Perception of Pestilence, eds Terence Ranger and Paul Slack (Cambridge, 1992), 101–23.
26
ASV, Pompe, busta 6, Denuncie, 18 Jan. 1604 (mv): ‘Non solo è contraria alla verità ma anco al verisimile’.
27
ASV, Pompe, busta 6, Denuncie, 18 Jan. 1604 (mv): ‘Non sono mai uscito de i termini della modestia, et
della tenue mia fortuna, et conditione’.
636 Patricia Allerston
were not, nor have there ever been, tapestries of any sort, but only a few old
domestic wall-hangings which do not contain any silk, along with a damask
bed hanging, and a pair of tin firedogs faked to look like bronze, with wooden
chests and a gilded iron bedstead. But these goods are not forbidden, and
they have been used in all my wife’s childbirths as well as during the main
annual festivals, to air them as much as anything. On account of these things,
while I am certain of being able to swear by the exemplary justice of Your
Illustrious Lordships, nevertheless, adding reasoning to reason (aggiondendo
rag.to a ragion), I offer also to prove the above.
That on the day of January 16 past named in the denunciation, the lower
entrance of my house, where the main door is located, was blocked and
obstructed by large sacks full of raw wool. These were not only ugly and
unpleasant to look at, but also hampered the passage in such a way that a
person could hardly get by. And my mother and Madonna Christina, my
aunt, widow of Messer Vettor d’Avanzo, who are the old ladies of our house-
hold, went around the house that day in their usual widows’ weeds of twilled
wool, and wearing their white aprons, as they usually do all year round to
carry out their household chores. And on that day there were no boats or
gondolas of any kind whatsoever at our wharf or even in our canal, called
the Rio della Fontana, because the water was too low [. . .]’.
Zuccato’s rejoinder is very different to Zuane’s denunciation. Whereas the
latter briefly denounces the merchant for flouting the sumptuary laws relat-
ing to childbirths, Zuccato categorically refutes this accusation, at length. A
close analysis of his reply, combined with knowledge of the circumstances
in which the documents were generated, can help us to evaluate their utility
as sources for the study of the domestic interior.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE I

Zuccato’s rejoinder is very carefully structured. It starts bullishly, by declaring

the denunciation to be not just untrue, but completely incredible. Zuccato
then reassures the magistrates that he has never overstepped the mark at
childbirths before. In so doing, the wool merchant demonstrates that he
knows his rightful place within the moral, economic and social order. Before
denying the specific charges laid against him, Zuccato supplies the magis-
trates with some additional information. He lets the magistrates know that
he has a large household that depends upon him, having earlier highlighted
the fact that his wife had given birth six times before. He also flags the
difficult economic circumstances in which he apparently finds himself,
through no fault of his own. Having thus presented himself as a worthy, yet
vulnerable Venetian citizen, Zuccato denies the sumptuary official’s specific
allegations point by point. First, he stresses that no female visitors came to
his house on the day in question. Secondly, he refutes the claim about the
display of forbidden goods, object-by-object. Finally, he seeks to prove these
 Entering a Venetian ‘lying-in’ chamber 637
points by arguing that no one was able to visit his house on that day, due to
a surfeit of merchandise at the entrance and an unusually low tide.
Early modern Venetian sumptuary regulations, including the measures
enacted to regulate childbirth celebrations, are usually portrayed as ineffectual,
King Canute-like measures.28 Read in this light, Zuccato’s declaration could
be interpreted as the light-hearted and knowing response of a man caught
doing something illicit which few took really seriously. The rather exagger-
ated fashion in which Zuccato refutes the accusations seems to bear out this
conclusion. The walls of his wife’s lying-in chamber were not furnished with
tapestries, but with only ‘a few old domestic wall-hangings’ of little value,
while the ‘bronze’ firedogs were tin fakes. These furnishings were displayed
‘to air them’ as much as for any other reason. Moreover, Zuccato’s elderly
female relatives were dressed in their ‘usual widows’ weeds’ rather than in
festive garb.29 In this respect, Zuccato’s case might be compared with the
slightly later example of Pasquetta, a seventeenth-century Venetian courte-
san. Pasquetta had been denounced for wearing sumptuous clothes in pub-
lic, and came to answer that accusation wearing the clothes for which she was
being prosecuted, together with additional forbidden items.30
If Zuane’s denunciation was relatively unimportant, however, what was the
point of Zuccato going to such lengths to deny the charges made against
him? Why did he feel the need to refute the specific accusations systematically,
object-by-object, then seek to prove that his house had not been accessible
on the day in question in any case? And why did he reveal embarrassing and
potentially damaging details about his economic situation? These contra-
dictions suggest that rather than making light of the sumptuary charges, the
merchant took them very seriously indeed. In seeking to make sense of
the documents, two additional sets of circumstances ought to be considered.
The first of these is the administrative system through which the sumptuary
laws were meant to be enforced. The second is the court system by which
infringements of these laws were supposedly punished. Neither of these
systems was at all straightforward in early seventeenth-century Venice, and
knowledge of both can help to explain the very detailed nature of Zuccato’s
rejoinder.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE II

Being a minor official attached to a civic magistracy, such as a clerk or fante

or indeed the capitano to whom a whole group of fanti answered, was not a
prestigious occupation in Renaissance and Early Modern Venice. The men

28
See Bistort, Il Magistrato alle Pompe, 203–4; Allerston, ‘Wedding finery’, 28–9, and Patricia Allerston,
‘Clothing and early modern Venetian society’, Continuity and Change, 15, No. 3 (2000), 373–4.
29
On the custom of ‘dressing-up’ household retainers on festive occasions, see Allerston, ‘Wedding finery’, 30.
30
ASV, Pompe, busta 6, Carte Giudiziarie, 27 Aug. 1639. I have discussed this case in ‘Clothing and early
modern Venetian society’, 380.
638 Patricia Allerston
who performed the tasks associated with these positions, were not even nec-
essarily the main post-holders, but were quite often substitutes who paid
them to practise the occupation in their steads. Badly remunerated, these
petty officials had a reputation for abusing their positions and indulging
in underhand activities, such as bribery and extortion.31 At the end of the
sixteenth century, the moralistic cleric Tomaso Garzoni gave an extremely
negative account of such functionaries, claiming that they secretly betrayed
justice for money.32 A comment attributed to a mid-seventeenth-century
Venetian tradesman similarly evokes this murky world of municipal policing:
‘money and friendship smother justice and giving a pair of silk hose to a
captain of the watch shuts everyone up . . .’.33 In short, given the underhand
means by which regulations such as sumptuary rulings were administered in
early seventeenth-century Venice, it is conceivable that Zuane’s denunciation
against Zuccato really was ‘contrary to the truth’. Indeed, it is a very real
possibility that the magistrates’ men did not see the camera del parto that they
described at all, but denounced Zuccato spuriously, with a view to gain. If
this were the case, it would not be surprising that Zuccato defended himself
with such care.
On the other hand, given the nature of the court system in early modern
Venice, it is equally possible that Zuccato thought he could sway the sumptuary
magistrates in his favour, irrespective of the capitano’s denunciation. Research
on a variety of Venetian judicial proceedings has shown that plaintiffs and
defendants, as well as witnesses, tailored their testimonies to fit the specific
court situation, purpose and audience.34 The above quote about ‘money and
friendship’ is a good case in point, being cited during an Inquisition investi-
gation. Whether the comment was actually made by the defendant is impossible
to prove, but the fact that a witness cited it in court reveals that the comment
was thought to be something that the Inquisition judges might believe. Close
analysis of Zuccato’s testimony demonstrates that he crafted it very carefully.
It takes a long time to get to the specifics of the denunciation because
Zuccato seeks first to demonstrate that he is a loyal servant of the state, who
pays his taxes, and knows his proper place in the natural order. He also takes

31
On the low status of the Signori di Notte al Criminal, for example, see Gasper Contareno, The Commonwealth
and Government of Venice, trans. Lewes Lewkenor (Amsterdam, 1969), 98; Gaetano Cozzi, ‘Authority and the
Law in Renaissance Venice’, in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London, 1973), 299; and Guido Ruggiero,
Violence in Early Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1980), 15–16. James Shaw’s thesis discusses
the nature of the officials involved in policing urban markets in Venice in detail, see ‘The Scales of Justice’,
43–102. The topic is also discussed in Patricia Allerston, ‘The market in second-hand clothes and furnish-
ings in Venice, c. 1500–c. 1650’ (unpublished Ph.D. diss., European University Institute, Florence, 1996), 92–
107.
32
Tomaso Garzoni, La Piazza Universale di Tutte le Professioni del Mondo, eds Paolo Cherchi and Beatrice
Collina, 2 vols (Turin, 1996), Vol. 2, Discorso CLI, ‘De’ sbirri, o zaffi, o agozini’, 1462.
33
ASV, Sant’Uffizio, busta 101, processo Stefano Valetta, denunc. Francesca della Fonte, 17 Mar. 1644.
34
See, for example, Brian Pullan, The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550–1670 (London and
New York, 1997), 103. One of the most useful recent discussions of this subject is Joanne M. Ferraro, Marriage
Wars in Late Renaissance Venice (Oxford, 2001), 3–13.
 Entering a Venetian ‘lying-in’ chamber 639
pains to show that he supports a substantial household, with the help of an
‘excellent’ relative, whose name might have been significant. We also learn
– at a time when the Venetian state was very sensitive about trade – that his
commercial activities had been struck by bad fortune.35 Moreover, the eloquent
way in which Zuccato refutes the claims made against him also reveals him
to be an educated man, far removed from the vulgar world of the capitano
and his fanti. This may also have been a deliberate ploy, given that the
sumptuary magistrates were of noble stock and had very little in common
with the base rough men who worked for them.36 To sum up, Zuccato’s
carefully crafted rejoinder makes good sense, when read with an understand-
ing of the audience to which it was directed.
In conclusion, by subjecting Zuane’s denunciation and Zuccato’s response
to close analysis, and by situating the two protagonists within the contempo-
rary Venetian judicial system ‘warts and all’, we gain a much better under-
standing of these documents – or rather, we can see their ambiguities more
clearly. Although we cannot be exactly sure what motivated the production
of these written sources, we are much better situated to evaluate their utility
as evidence on the festive interior that they purport to describe. While the
two documents can be seen as shedding light on the ways in which the
Venetian judicial system – and the actors within it – operated, do they really
take us in to an actual interior? Much like the engraving of the harlot’s bed
chamber which was highlighted at the start, they can be seen as constructing
an image of an interior whose relation to reality is very hard to gauge.

National Galleries of Scotland

35
A good insight into the state of trade and the Venetian government’s desire to protect commerce can
be had from the work of Benjamin Ravid on the Jewish merchants of Venice. See, for example, ‘A tale of
three cities and their raison d’état: Ancona, Venice, Livorno, and the competition for Jewish merchants in the
sixteenth century’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 6 (1991), 138–61; and Economics and Toleration in Seventeenth
Century Venice: The Background and Context of the Discorso of Simone Luzzatto (Jerusalem, 1977).
36
See the way Zuccato addresses the judges at the start of his rejoinder. On the use of noble judges and
their lack of legal training, see Shaw, ‘The Scales of Justice’, 35–8.