Biography

Francesca Trivellato is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Early Modern European History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. A specialist of early modern Italy and continental Europe, she is the author of numerous works that have broadened the contours of economic history, including: Fondamenta dei vetrai: Lavoro, tecnologia e mercato a Venezia tra Sei e Settecento (Donzelli, 2000); The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (Yale University Press, 2009); and The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells us about the Making of European Commercial Society (Princeton University Press, 2019).

Project Summary

Long before the age of revolutions, European law and moral theology debated the place of individual choice and free will in many spheres of life, including economic transactions. But what did free will mean at a time when staggering inequalities of status disempowered commoners compared to aristocrats, women compared to men, and enslaved persons compared to free people? This project addresses this multifaceted question by analyzing the textual definitions and visual representations of economic justice that emerged in late medieval and Renaissance Italy. It also brings these definitions and representations to bear on the empirical study of everyday market relations in early modern Italian cities.