Stefano Rosselli: secrets and the Medici

Genoese Cotognata (quince paste) in branches or other (shapes)
Take white tender quinces, cook them in the area of the oven that is hot enough that the quinces become tender enough to pound and put through a sieve but not too hot that they darken in colour. Pare them and remove the cores. If they redden, they will turn bad. Take five pounds of the strained pulp, five pounds of finely pounded sugar and stir with a wooden stick or spoon so it does not stick. When it is cooked sufficiently, remove from the fire. Take wooden moulds and shape into leaves, animals and what you please. Place in the sun. If there is no sun, put into a tepid stove, turning every day. Take out from the moulds when the outside is dry and the inside has set into a paste. When putting into the moulds, dust a little fine sugar over them. Leaves and other animals from the imagination can also be made on a wooden board. This is the method used by my son Francesco, but most times the quinces come out somewhat red and not so white. This is because quince pears change colour in the oven so they need to be cooked in a way that they become tender and do not darken. I believe they will turn out white, like Genoese cotognata, if cooked in water, sieved and left to dry in  a pan or wooden board on top of a stove.       

In the mid-sixteenth century, solid quince pastes imported into England from Italy, Spain and Portugal were variously known as marmalades (from the Portuguese ‘marmelo’ – quince). The first recipe in print to refer to marmalade in English appears in the 1562 Secretes of the Reverende Maister Alexis of Piedmont: "To make conserve or confiture of quinces [..] as they dooe in Valence [Valencia] which also the Genoese dooe use, we call it in England marmalade" (from the original Italian of 1555 via the French translation)¹

When Henry Lyte translated Rembert Dodoens' Cruydeboeck (1554) for an English audience, he stated that  "(quince) codignac or marmelade [...] made with sugar is very good and profitable for the stomacke to strengthen the same, and to retaine and keepe the meates in the same, until they be perfectly digested" and that it "closeth the mouth of the stomacke so fast, that no vapours can come foorth, nor ascend up to the brayne". We find the same medical practices associated with quince pastes in contemporary Italian sources: in 1566, the Venetian physician Prospero Borgarucci declared in his practical manual for pharmacists that doctors recommended cotognato to "prevent vapours from the stomach ascending to the head". It is for these reasons that cotognato was always served in the last course of Renaissance banquets.

The recipe above comes from a manuscript book of secrets compiled in Florence by Stefano di Romolo Rosselli, "apothecary at the sign of San Francesco on the Canto del Giglio", that he started on 10 August 1593.

What makes his recipes especially important are their connections to the Medici court (see also my earlier post on Medici anti-poison oil). They are vital records of practice because Giovanni Dal Maestro records that Rosselli supplied the confectionery for the Medici baptism of Prince Cosimo and his sister Eleonora in April 1592 ("calciotti con pistacchiata, ravioli cotti, animali cotti, mostacciuoli ricamati, marroni franciosi, calicetti pizzicate et colorate, cannella confetta, mandorle riccute, anici confetti, pasta di Fiandra, funghi finti"). Two hundred boxes of cotognata were also ordered from the Pitti stores for that celebration. An even stronger link is that Stefano himself is listed amongst the Medici salaried staff between 1588 and 1595, earning 3 scudi a month plus a horse. Also now known is the prominent role of Coriolano Osio, the Medici's confettiere (confectioner) housed within the Fonderia in the Uffizi palace, at a salary of 8 scudi a month. It was from Coriolano that Rosselli obtained his recipe for "candied citron and lemons" which Rosselli says he made "many times, above all for the Grand Duke's wedding celebrations (May 1589), recently described as "one of the most expensive and spectacular festivities devised anywhere in the sixteenth century". 

Aged seventy, Rosselli intended this compilation as a legacy to his sons Francesco and Vincenzo, who had followed him into the profession. He included only those secrets "proved many times". However, Stefano had assiduously recorded "recipes of all sorts, true and not true which came to him from day to day" and "recipes and secrets that came into his hands, noting down from whom they were acquired", since at least 1569 when he  opened his shop on the Canto del Giglio. We know this because two further collections of his secrets have unusually survived, now in the Laurentian and Marucelliana libraries in Florence. 

These three working manuscripts provide us with rare insights into how recipes were collected, sifted and evaluated and into how recipes operated as "invitations to action and experimentation" (Pamela Smith). Taking a closer look at his recipe for Genoese cotognato, we see Stefano trying out and testing techniques to make a pale quince paste, judging his method better than his son's. Making this "white marmelade" called for extreme care and judgement to prevent the quinces developing a ruby-red hue as they cooked. Immediately preceding this recipe in the 1593 manuscript is one which Stefano had gathered from Antonia (de) Silva (Suarez) "spagnola", the wife of a prominent Portuguese merchant resident in Florence, for white "cotognato alla portug(h)ese, "which few here know how to make". This calls for the quinces to be boiled, then the pulp sieved; and Rosselli follows this advice. He may also have read the same method  advocated in texts such as Borgarucci's manual (in his recipe for cotognato sodo ("much used by the Genoese its inventors") or in Agostino Gallo's treatise, Le vinti giornate dell'agricoltura et de piaceri della villa (The Twenty Days of Agriculture and the Pleasures of the Villa). 

Cotognato came in many varieties: the Genoese version was particularly renowned--so one variant known as "pizze di genoa" was offered for example alongside Portuguese "mermelada" and Bolognese quince in May 1581 in Mantua and alongside Bolognese and Portuguese "cotognato" at a banquet in Rome in May 1593. Though frequently packaged in small round wooden boxes, as the recipe above makes clear, cotognato could also be moulded into amazing translucent shapes--the most astounding example being a statue of "Florence with a lion at her feet", created by Coriolano Osio for the Medici in 1589 from wax bas-relief moulds produced by two sculptors and stone-cutters, Pagholo del Fantasia and Andrea di Michelagnolo Ferruzzi.         

Select Bibliography

Stefano di Romolo Rosselli, Mes secrets à Florence au temps du Médicis 1593, (Paris, 1996). Recipe at cap.XXX, 186-7 
Stefano Rosselli, Segreti diversi (Florence, 1569-88), Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana, Florence, Ms Antinori 151
Stefano Rosselli, Zibaldone di diversi segreti, raccolto da Stefano di Maestro Romolo Rosselli, Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence, Cod. C-CXLV
Fanny Kieffer, La confiserie des Offices: art, sciences et magnificence à la cour des Médicis, Predella, Journal of Visual Arts, no. 33, 2013 [2014]
C. Anne Wilson, The Book of Marmalade, 2nd revised edition, (London, 2010)
Suzanne B. Butters, The Triumph of Vulcan: Sculptors' Tools, Porphyry, and the Prince in Ducal Florence, 2 vols (Florence, 1996)
James Shaw and Evelyn Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence (Amsterdam, 2011)

Doctor's orders

To make a concentrate (broth) of capon

Take a plump capon that is middle aged [i.e. between a year and eighteen months] not force-fed, not too young and not decrepit, because the young one lacks substance and the overly old one will be too tough and take too long to make a broth...The capon should be freshly slaughtered, because the longer it has been dead, the less strength the concentrate will have. Once the capon has been gutted, cut into small pieces. It will be better if its throat has been cut rather than its neck wrung, because its meat will stay whiter. And if you can do it without washing it, that would be better, though to make it cleaner and more delicate, wash it once without wringing it out. Place the little pieces into a glazed earthenware pot that does not smell and cover with four fingers of water. Boil it on a low fire and skim throughly. Once skimmed,  put an earthenware cover onto the pot, sealing it with dough all around so no vapour escapes. Then place the pot on the coals away from the flames, with a brick or another weight on top of the cover so the lid does not lift. Simmer slowly for around three hours, depending on the age of the chicken, until it has reduced by two-thirds. To be certain (about the timing) and without having to uncover the pot many times, put the chicken's feet into another pot and boil them too in water with the pot well-sealed. When the feet are cooked, then the broth will be well reduced and ready.  Put it through a filter or strainer. Give it for drinking with sugar or other substances as prescribed by the Physician.

This recipe is taken from Book VI of Bartolomeo Scappi's Opera (1570) which deals with food for convalescents. Scappi had reached the pinnacle of his profession as the pope's personal cook. Yet throughout Book VI, he is painstakingly careful to show his recipes follow doctor's orders; for "court physicians...alone had the authority and the responsibility to prescribe what should be consumed by the truly sick" (Terence Scully).  Scappi even tells us that the pope's physician, Federigo Donati, could testify that these preparations had been tried and tested (esperimentade) on many signori. Within the recipes, repeated reference is made to the Physician determining whether to add or exclude certain ingredients. 

According to medical tradition, rich concentrated capon or chicken broths were prescribed when physicians wished to restore the lagging strength of the sick, the elderly and women in childbirth.  

Complexion or temperament was the individual balance of the qualities of hot, cold, wet and dry resulting from the mixture of elements in the body. All foods were variously classified as relatively hot, cold, wet and dry and so to eat right was to select foods matched to a person's individual complexion or which could temper any imbalance. To eat right involved calibrating the right combinations of foods in in the right amounts at the right time, taking into account other factors such as age, season and exercise taken.  

The physician Castor Durante, who practiced in Rome, describes capon as highly nutritious, "perfectly temperate in all qualities",  agreeable for "all complexions" and preferable to all other meats because it "generates perfect blood and balances all the humours". Capon, he says, was good for all ages and all seasons. 

Actual recipes and what physicians thought should be eaten are often at total variance with each other. But not here. Scappi follows medical advice in offering capon to recovering patients in its most concentrated and easily digestible form; a restorative drink, to be supped by those too weak to fully digest even the lightest foods.   The aging cardinal Pietro Bembo was dosed by Scappi with a distilled concentrate of capon. Here his recipe closely resembles the method outlined in an official printed pharmacopoeia, the Ricettario Fiorentino,  with the capon meat suspended by little (silk) threads in a sealed glass flask. The key point about Scappi's recipes for convalescents is that he expected physicians to tailor these preparations to match individual complexions--sugar or other ingredients were added according to the doctor's individual prescription. 

There is no indication that Scappi was familiar with learned medical tracts and he never tries to explain why these broths worked. But the value of such restoratives was already widely diffused in popular culture. Ulisse Aldrovandi noted "Our (Milanese) women pound up a pullet with its bones and cook it in its own broth until it is reduced to a very small quantity and acquires the consistency of a white pap; this they give to patients with excellent results".  Scipione Mercurio observed that in Venice "at the start of almost any illness, people immediately resort to a restorative--an essence of distilled chicken".  

 

Medici anti-poison oil

Leaving Florence in May 1601 on a secret mission to warn James VI of Scotland of a plot against his life, Henry Wotton carried with him a casket of antidotes from Grand Duke Ferdinand. This included Medici anti-poison oil.

Making direct connections between recipes and objects is often problematic--but in this case the possibilities can be documented. From at least July 1588, the ducal Fonderia was systematically producing such caskets, in walnut or ebony, containing Medici remedies together with printed ricette (prescriptions) giving directions for their use. These caskets were divided into compartments for eight, ten, eighteen or twenty-four medicines.  They were diplomatic gifts--part of the wider exchange of medicines, recipes, ingredients, equipment and skilled practitioners that flowed between courts and coursed through formal and informal channels.

Established by Cosimo I and first situated inside Palazzo Vecchio, the fonderie were laboratories--for the production of alchemical medicines (distilled oils, liquors, elixirs, refined salts, potable gold), distilled waters and perfumes and for conducting research into the full range of practical alchemy-- from metallurgy to pharmacology.  

Ambassadorial reports provide vivid testimony of the direct involvement of Cosimo and Francesco de' Medici in this experimental work. Hercole Cortile reported in July 1576 that the reclusive and melancholic Francesco spent "much of his day in making remedies against the plague, especially oils. And the other day, at the Casino (his city retreat and the relocated site of the Fonderia), he led me into a camerino (small room) with many basins full of live scorpions. He told me there were around seventy thousand, which he fed on "a certain herb". Ercole witnessed the Grand Duke spectacularly plunge scorpions "without them stinging him" into  a glass boccia (flask) containing one hundred-year oil. Cortile was then told that this oil needed to be left in direct sunlight for fifty days. Four months earlier, the Venetian ambassador Andrea Gussoni reported Francesco telling him that "wishing to experiment (fare esperienza) [this oil] on condemned prisoners by giving them poison to drink", he had completely cured them.  

Cosimo himself recommended that Ferrante Gonzaga experiment an untested batch of Medici anti-poison oil on "someone condemned to death". Such grisly controlled trials followed the classical example of King Mithridates and received further sanction in Pietro Andrea Mattioli's influential Commentaries on Dioscorides; a text closely studied by Cosimo, whose heavily annotated copy of the 1544 first edition survives. Mattioli described how his master, the surgeon Gregorio Caravita, had tried out a new poison antidote on two condemned "Corsican assassins" before the Medici Pope Clement VII in 1524.  Both men were given napellum (wolfsbane); only Gianfrancesco received the antidote. He recovered after three days; Ambrogio was watched dying in extreme suffering. Like the later experimentation of poisons on slaves recorded by Della Porta, here "passion for experimental research interwove with a cruel game, an uninhibited divertissement" (Lina Bolzoni).  In August 1563, Cosimo sent his cousin Jacopo d'Appiano, Prince of Piombino, the recipe for "olio di caravita".  

Production and experimentation drew heavily on the services of expert distillers. One key figure was Niccolo Sisti. Twenty-one thousand scorpions were delivered in five consignments to Sisti in July 1580. Alongside distilling medicines, Sisti is best-known for undertaking experiments at the Casino for Francesco into new forms of porcelain and glassmaking. In 1591, under Grand Duke Ferdinand, Niccolo took over the management of the Fonderia. Eleven years later in the same employment, he was documented paying Gabriello d'Antonio da San Ripoli from the countryside outside Pistoia for 25 pounds of scorpions to make "anti-poison oil".

In Renaissance Secrets, the recipe given for Medici anti-poison oil comes from the Florentine apothecary Stefano Rosselli--he claims it to be Cosimo's own formula. This formula does correspond to another for the same oil in a 1556 manuscript collection of recipes supposedly written "by the Duke's hand or in his presence". A key variant in this later recipe (c.1589) is that two ingredients were replaced--hepatic aloes by the higher quality and rarer Socotra aloes and white dittany by Cretan dittany--seemingly because Mattioli had noted that the "true" Cretan dittany advocated and used by Dioscorides had been rediscovered and was now available in Venice . These changes reflect Rosselli's active participation within the community of naturalists and in the lucrative trade in medicinal simples; he established a botanical garden at his villa; he had samples of true costo and Peruvian balsam on display in his museum in his pharmacy; he corresponded with Ulisse Aldrovandi in Bologna, Pietro Antonio Michiel in Venice and Tadeáš Hájek in Prague. Importantly, Rosselli acquired recipes directly from experts within the Fonderia --from Pietro Bertola, Paolo Banchelli, Sebastiano Manzone and Niccolo Sisti. The son of his business partner, Jacopo Dori, was also Sisti's apprentice. Rosselli also copied down a recipe supplied by Bernardo Buontalenti for the poison antidote Mattioli tested for his employer, Archduke Ferdinand, King of Hungary, said to be from Cosimo. He also states that he and Baccio Baldini (Cosimo's physician) tested this powder by order of Duke Francesco (like Mattioli) on a condemned prisoner (using arsenic). However, Rosselli did also improve Medici recipes--he deliberately altered the formula of Cosimo's oil against plague and petechie (petechial typhus), creating his own version, because the sick were offended by its foul smell. 
  

The Ragusan connection

In 1561, the first book of secrets attributed to a woman, the Secreti della Signora Isabella Cortese was published in Venice. In Renaissance Secrets, I claim she was a fictitious author, but didn’t explain why. Now I want to set out the evidence behind that judgement.

No details about an actual Isabella Cortese or her life have ever emerged.

Instead three men--Giovanni Bariletto, Curtio Troiano di Navò and Mario Caboga—can all be connected to this edition. Links between them stretch from Venice to Ragusa (Dubrovnik) to Brescia.

Bariletto was a printer/publisher who came to Venice from the Riviera di Salò on Lake Garda around 1550; his imprint “at the sign of Prudence on the Stagnaria” appears from 1559. That year he published a book of secrets entitled Della summa de'secreti universali in ogni materia parte prima […] di Don Timoteo Rossello.

Curtio Troiano di Navò was his brother-in-law. He is described as a “book merchant” and printer/publisher operating in Venice “at the sign of the Lion”. Like Bariletto, he was a fellow Brescian who had moved to the city. Though his father Troiano had passed the firm “at the sign of Prudence” onto Bariletto he nonetheless retained a hands-on role. Significantly, it was Curtio in 1560 that applied for print privileges for the Secreti of Isabella Cortese, for the second and third parts of the Secreti of Timoteo Rossello and an expanded edition of the Siennese metallurgist Vannoccio Biringuccio’s (1480–c.1539) Pirotechnia.

Curtio Navò dedicated his third edition of the Pirotechnia to the Archdeacon of Ragusa, Mario (o Marino Caboga). The dedication states that all three editions been “embellished and amended” by Caboga and reveals that the dedicatees of the first two editions were fictitious. Navò himself is documented trading in books in Ragusa in 1559 and 1560 so a Ragusan connection between the two men is highly probable. 

Significantly, both the Secreti of Isabella Cortese and the Secreti of Timoteo Rossello are dedicated to Caboga.

“The identity of both books is manifest. Their form, style, background reveal the same source, the same origin” (Armand Baschet and Félix-Sébastien Feuillet de Conches 1865). Future scholarship could build on this fundamental insight. My own working hypothesis is that these two books are printers’ compilations and that both authors are fictitious.

Bibliography

Della summa de'secreti uniuersali in ogni materia parte prima di Don Timotheo Rossello si per homini & donne, di alto ingegno, come ancora per medici, & ogni sorte di artefici industriosi, con molte galantarie ad ogni persona gentile accommodate (In Venetia, appresso Giovanni Bariletto, 1559).

Della summa de'secreti uniuersali in ogni materia parte prima [-seconda], di Don Timotheo Rossello si per huomini e donne, di alto ingegno, come ancora per medici, e ogni sorte di artefici industriosi e a ogni persone virtuosa accommodate (In Vinegia: per Giouanni Bariletto, 1561).

I secreti de la signora Isabella Cortese ne' quali si contengono cose minerali, medicinali, arteficiose, et alchimiche, et molte de l'arte profumatoria, appartenenti a ogni gran signora. Con privilegio (In Venetia, appresso Giouanni Bariletto, 1561).

Pirotechnia. Li diece libri della pirotechnia nelli quali si tratta non solo la diuersità delle minere, ma ancho quanto si ricerca alla prattica di esse: e di quanto s'appartiene all'arte della fusione ouer getto de metalli, e d'ogni altra cosa a questa somigliante. Composta per il s. Vannuccio Biringoccio, nobile senese. [Venezia: Curtio Troiano Navò], 1558, title page (In Vinegia: per Comin da Trino di Monferrato: [Curtio Troiano Navò], 1559, colophon). The dedication is dated 15 April 1558.

Horatio C.Brown, “Privilegi veneziani per la stampa concessa dal 1527 al 1597." Venezia, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Mss. Ital. Cl. VII, 2500-2502 (12077-12079). The original privilege copied by Brown is in Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Senato, Terra, r.42, 1559-60, Speciales Personae, c.148r, approved on 17 August 1560.

Claire Lesage, ‘La litterature des "secrets" et I secreti d'Isabella Cortese’, Chroniques italiennes, Université Paris III, 1993.

Corrado Marciani, ‘Troiano Navo di Brescia e suo figlio Curzio librai-editori del secolo XVI’, La Bibliofilia, 73 (1971), disp.1, 49-60

NB Further links between Bariletto and Curtio Troiano can be found in Il fiore della retorica di messer Girolamo mascher mantovano (in Vinegia: per Giovanni Bariletto, 1560). This includes a papal privilege granted to "Curtio Troiano mercante de libri venetiano" (May 1560) and privileges obtained by Bariletto from the Venetian Senate for this book and Il Luminare maggiore translated by Pietro Lauro (29/07/1559). The dedication by Pietro Lauro to Andrea Babali in this work (1559) states this was at the urging of Curtio Troiano. Like the Caboga/Kaboga, the Babali/Bobaljevic were a leading Ragusan patrician family. Giacomo di Andrea Baballi, a merchant is documented in Venice from 1558 : six years later, the eighteen-year-old Veronica Franco gave him full custody of yet her unborn child in her first will: see Margaret Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth Venice, n.46, p.293

Reassessing Maggino Gabrielli

Further research findings enable the narrow and critical picture in Renaissance Secrets of Maggino Gabrielli to be redrawn significantly. 


In September 1586, Maggino drew up a partnership contract with a nobleman from Lucca, Giovan Battista Guidoboni, authorizing him to acquire patents for Guidoboni's inventions in all of the Italian states and in France and Spain (see the entry in Renaissance Secrets on ‘Raising Silkworms’). The most striking of these inventions was a system for producing a second harvest of silkworms during the summer. Gabrielli was granted a sixty-year patent valid in all the Papal States by Sixtus V for this secret the following July. However, one half of all his future profits were awarded to the Pope's sister, Camilla Peretti. Recent research has shown that Camilla in fact established an experimental silkworm raising facility under Maggino at her satellite court—the Villa Montalto, near the Baths of Diocletian (a site now occupied by Roma Termini station).  This villa (referred to as the papal vineyard) is illustrated in the background of one of the engravings in Gabrielli’s Dialogues on Useful Inventions for Silk (this image is reproduced on page 10 of Renaissance Secrets).


Gabrielli was granted a second patent in July 1588, for a process to make transparent glass and crystal using a distillate of certain wild herbs, native to the Roman countryside. This should be linked to his establishment of a glassworks in Rome, which supplied the window glass for some of the most important construction projects in the city, including the Lateran Palace, the Vatican Library and even the Palace of Sixtus V in the Vatican. Maggino even acquired exclusive rights in the Papal States to manufacture and supply carafes and other transparent glassware for measures of wine, oil and vinegar sold at retail, designs that combated fraud.  He had 50,000 copies of the papal edict printed so these could be distributed by his commission agents.


Forced to flee Rome after the death of Pope Sixtus, Maggino settled in Tuscany with the protection of Grand Duke Ferdinand. He purchased a glassworks in Pisa and in November 1590 successfully petitioned to buy a papermill at San Niccolo a Calenzano. His partner in this enterprise was Jewish--Daniele Calo, son of Isaac, whose brother Donato, a second hand dealer, could supply the vast quantity of rags needed. Their contract also envisaged the establishment of silkworm raising on the property. 


With just six weeks, he was forced to seek further investment to meet duties on the property from another Venetian Levantine Jew, Joseph di Moisè Benino. His troubles continued--next he partnered with Bernardino Naldini (June 1592), created a short-lived company with Maier Lombroso, another Levantine Jew in Florence (November 1592-June 1593). With the business deteriorating again, he partnered another inventor, Luca Colombini from Spoleto (January 1594). Colombini had obtained a privilege in 1591 for an oil mill, which increased productivity by fifteen per cent and a brick/lime furnace fuelled by sansa (the residual by-product of pressing olives). When Colombini moved his operation to Calenzano, Maggino had effectively created his own innovation centre. 


The creation of a Jewish nation in Livorno was the outcome of concerted policies by the Medici Grand Dukes to capture the entrepreneurial talent of Sephardic refugees. Maggino played a leading role in this nascent community. He was appointed as the first consul of the Jewish nation in Livorno. He proved such a skillful mediator that the Medici even issued him with a passport to travel to the Levant in 1592 to attract Jewish traders to settle in the city. Meanwhile, Gabrielli rapidly established a network of companies in 1593 to manufacture silk and woollen cloths, gold thread and another glassworks, based in Florence, Pisa and Livorno--unfortunately all of which rapidly failed. 


Select Bibliography. 

The information presented here is based on the following sources:-
Ariel Toaff, Il Prestigiatore di Dio. Avventure e miracoli di un alchimista ebreo nelle corti del Rinascimento (Milan, 2010). 
Dora Liscia Bemporad, Maggino di Gabriello "Hebreo Venetiano". I Dialoghi sopra l'utili sue inventioni circa la seta (Pisa, 2010).
Daniel Jütte,’Handel, Wissenstransfer und Netzwerke. Eine Fallstudie zu Grenzen und Möglichkeiten unternehmerischen Handelns unter Juden zwischen Reich, Italien und Levante um 1600’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 95:3 (2008), 263-90.
Evelyn Lincoln, ‘The Jew and the worms: portraits and patronage in a sixteenth century how-to-do manual’, Word & Image, 19: 1-2 (2003), 86-99.

Luca Molà,’ Energia e brevetti per invenzioni nell’Italia del Rinascimento’ in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed) Economia E Energia, Secc. XIII-XVII: Istituto internazionale di storia economica F. Datini (Florence, 2003). 

Here's one I made earlier

I recently took part in a workshop run by the Early Modern Dress and Textiles Research Network where we took published recipes from the Renaissance for perfumes and cosmetics and attempted to reconstruct them. This was very successful in demonstrating the relative ease with which many of the basic processes described could have been undertaken with limited equipment and facilities. It also made it clear that the difficulties lay less in the recipes themselves than in the sheer cost of the ingredients required and in quality control (substances such as musk and ambergris were frequently adulterated). 

We also discussed the role of perfumes and cosmetics at court and here's an extract from my presentation on that topic. "Courts were one of the most prominent sites of practical alchemy, medical distilling and experimental practice. Take Florence for example. The Medici were at the forefront of such research and medical secrets—and anti-poison antidotes and Medici cures (with accompanying recipes) produced in the ducal Fonderia were part of the currency of diplomacy and were frequently exchanged as gifts with relatives, friends, agents, ambassadors, cardinals and rulers all over Europe. This was an operation on an industrial scale and the Medici even printed batches of hundreds of recipes and instructions for use for their trademark cures. Perfumes & cosmetics entered into this ‘economy of exchange’ –and the Medici correspondence contains numerous requests for ingredients and exchange of recipes, notably for gloves and scented waters to and from elite women (engaged in devising their own recipes & blends).  Also, to supply court needs, Grand Duke Ferdinando salaried a full-time perfumer (Marco) in the Fonderia (1588) alongside expert distillers.

Those in pursuit of patronage frequently offered trade secrets to courts. One fascinating example concerning perfumes relates to Mantua. In April 1571, the Spanish doctor Giovanni (Juan) Pacheco wrote directly to Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga asking to present at court, one Gerolamo Liotto, an engraver. Liotto he had met in Venice, employing him in the printing of his latest book and he had discovered Liotto possessed several valuable secrets. The first and most important, already revealed to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, Liotto had inherited from his father. This was a technique to unspike an artillery piece in no time. The other secrets he offered were to extract aromatic oils from cinnamon, cloves and flowers, ‘without any liquor’ and to produce musk oil. The request was eventually granted. This case is an important reminder that when it came to trade secrets (as noted by Deborah Harkness in Elizabethan London) "there was no necessary connection between how one made a living and what one knew".

Silkworms & Pork

According to the Bolognese street poet Giulio Cesare Croce, a trade secret of the silk industry was to perfume the rooms in which silkworms were bred with the ‘great fragrance’ of a grilled pork chop. Researching further into silk, I’ve recently found this same secret described in Agostino Gallo’s agronomical treatise Le venti giornate (The Twenty Days), published in 1569. Excellent producers, ‘often perfumed the places in which silkworms were raised with incense, pork lard and even sausages placed on the grill’.  These odours were believed to invigorate the silkworms and protect them from disease. Diseases were spread through stench in contemporary medical theory, so Gallo stressed the importance of keeping all surfaces clean and disinfecting them by rubbing with sweet-smelling herbs. The silkworms had also to be sprinkled with good vinegar. These procedures enabled the silkworms to sense the pleasant odours of the herbs and vinegar and eliminated the danger from their foul-smelling excrement. 


Gallo’s work was an important source of information for the treatises on silk by Giovan Andrea Corsuccio and Maggino Gabrielli, discussed in Renaissance Secrets . For example, Gallo reports the practice of immersing the silkworms into tepid malmsey wine (or aged vernaccia) to separate out the healthy larvae from the unhealthy. In Gallo’s imaginary dialogue, the Brescian nobleman Giulio Calzaveglia here recalls the example of the legendary Spartan Lycurgus from Plutarch’s Lives. Women washed newborn babies in wine to test their strength: 

‘For washing those liable to sickness and seizures in undiluted wine would induce convulsions, whilst the healthy would become tougher and more vigorous’.

Also, these treatises openly acknowledge women’s role and expertise in silk-production. This opens up the whole unanswered issue of the extent to which these male authors may have appropriated female trade secrets. There are evident parallels in other domains—for example, increasing male authority in diagnosing and prescribing treatments for women's gynecological conditions (especially infertility) and in obstetrics.