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xvii Introduction lEXIconS AnD GRAMMARS At the beginning of my research, there was not yet any historical-economical literature on the “art markets,” but my early analyses of the primary sources—especially those concerning the courts—and exploration in the more specialized art-historical literature convinced me that the production and consumption of artwork, luxury items, and services were really the backbone of pre-industrial economies and far from being just accessories. on the contrary, in observing the Italian situation, I persuaded myself that that backbone had already supported the industrial takeoff—today we may say it—by mitigating the backlash of the violent postindustrial landing, from the moment that the recession of the last decade seemed not to have hurt the creative industries, heirs of a tradition that is older than usually thought, and that rigid and noncommunicative disciplinary divisions have in fact obliterated. To my eyes, as a young scholar, it seemed obvious that the Italy of fabrics, shoes, leather goods, fashion, architecture, furnishings, majolica, ceramics, goldsmithery, furs, car designers, builders, design, musical-instrument makers, makers of specialty papers and of high quality foods and wines, of Riva and Ferrari, had its economic, social, and cultural roots deep in the somewhat overlooked terrain of the art markets. This hypothesis gained consensus over time. Enrico Stumpo has confirmed that the “endless production of art objects and the antique trade that existed in Italy between Quattro and Settecento, and extended through the ottocento and early novecento, involving many Italian cities and a large number of artisans, painters, and sculptors” has “instigated a complex commercial movement, not just between Italy and Europe, of imported raw materials and exported objects that no scholar has, for obvious reasons, even tried to calculate. It probably allowed the integration of the manufacturing economies of famous centers like Florence, Venice , Genoa, Rome, or Milan, with diversified production of not only artistic but also certainly luxury objects, arms, jewelry, silverware, musical instruments, decoration, furniture, ceramics and majolica, paintings, statues, stuccos, and the art markets’ coins, medals, prints, engravings , mirrors, lighting fixtures.”1 Similarly, Marco Belfanti and Giovanni luigi Fontana, in an article titled Rinascimento e made in Italy, have observed that between the Quattro and cinquecento, Italian taste had become the “reference point, the touchstone, not to say model, for a large part of Europe.”2 nevertheless, in contradiction to the interpretations of the crisis that in the Seicento assailed our “traditional artisan luxury” business, the same authors have determined that “numerous studies on modern and contemporary history have shown that, even though in a very different context, diverse typically Italian products (textiles, ceramics, publishing, glass, etc.) were not subject to sudden interruptions, nor did they show signs of a definitive decline. This network of territorial specializations would be the basis for the development of the districts of made in Italy of the later nineteenth century.”3 xviii| Introduction In tune with this sort of opinion, which has stressed continuity and durability over the long run, I realized that the analysis of the structures and dynamics of these markets in modern and contemporary periods would require a healing of the twentieth-century fracture between the interests in the history of economy, techniques, art, and architecture. The time, on the other hand, seemed to be ripe for healing the wounds suffered from the Sette- and ottocentesque break between art and craft, between useful and not-useful arts, the practical and nonproductive , and at last to return by other paths to the origins of Italy’s twentieth-century industrial success. These breaks had unfortunately provoked a lengthy schism that caused the activities involved in the art markets, presided over since the early 1930s by the so-called artistic industries , to be considered too industrial to merit the attention of art history and too artistic for the economic historians, causing a gap of equidistant disinterest at this crossroad. Surely this was a missed occasion, since looking closely at the recomposition allows us to reconstruct the genealogies of important sectors of the Italian economy; the forms of transmission and migration of knowledge, know-how, and intangible assets; the mechanisms of development of organizational capacities; and more. If Marazzi is heir to the Este manufacturers , so is Beretta of the Sforza armorers, and many other players in contemporary industry are in a similar relation to the past. Besides historiographical interests, my curiosity was piqued by other phenomena, and even though I had begun my archival research, I continued to read economic literature...

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