WARWICK CASE: Printing, Property and Protection: A Venetian Appropriation of Social Rights through Patronage in the Renaissance.

Referred to in Italian as La Serenissima, the ‘Most Serene Republic of Venice’ was outwardly portrayed by the state through a variety of different mechanisms. By the late fifteenth century, Venice had established herself at the heart of European commercial activity boasting an expansive empire which ranged expansively across the Istrian peninsula to the island of Cyprus. Central to this political and economic identity sat the Palazzo Ducale where the doge and his elected Great Council administered justice. Legal mechanisms by the sixteenth century were justified through a Renaissance ideal of architectural commissioning and the evolution of visual, iconographical messages.1 An increase in state patronage of the visual arts hinged around the damaging realities suffered by the state in the aftermath of the War of the League of Cambrai. Losing a sizable part of the maritime stato da mar and the majority of the mainland Terraferma, the empire was rapidly collapsing yet the city itself remained unscathed. In order to maintain appearances of strength and prosperity, the republic targeted the propagation of artistic symbols across the city embracing humanism, religious devotion, classicism and political icons. Where scholarship on Renaissance Venice has traditionally revolved around source material which embody La Serenissima (humanist texts and political statements) legal documents have been denigrated to the periphery of this framework. Unlike the struggles of the sixteenth century, the Venetian state by 1474 was an established commercial entity on the European stage and therefore legal documents were at the heart of republican identity as opposed to the succeeding artistic manifestation of state power and authority.2

With a population which exceeded 100,000 and a bustling community of onward travelling merchants, significant social provisions were made by the state in order to maintain peace and prosperity across a powerful dominion. However, the relationship between the state and its servants were a multidimensional one. The enforcement of legislation presented by the Venetian Pregadi ensured the power dynamic between the two parties reflected stately ambitions to benefit from the respective law. Here, this article challenges the traditional narrative which places the ‘legal protection of economic, social and cultural rights’ at the heart of decisions made by the state.3 Rather I argue that an analysis of the Venetian Patent Law of 1474 falls within a broader Early Modern narrative of administered social rights. As Charles Walton defines, a legal historiography of individual and collective rights must consider ‘claims and observations relating to well being’ - a concept which the fifteenth-century republic of Venice certainly recognised despite lacking the protective mechanisms associated with such procedures from a contemporary standpoint.4

Whilst monarchy, ecclesiastical forms of authority, imperial and courtly rule were common in the territories surrounding the floating city, the republican identity of Venice was a unique model for government. The Serrata of 1297, the closing of the nobility and hence those eligible for election into the Great Council, was a significant turning point in the administration of justice. Hence, only members of the Venetian nobility made up the Great Council and important political institutions of Venice. Where the concentration of individual power in other Early Modern territories proved volatile, the Venetians were assertive in their allegiance to maintaining a collective government identity.

‘We are held and obliged under oath, whenever the Great Council is called, to be present and to stay in it, unless some personal impediment prevents us, and the same we are bound to do whenever the Senate is called’5 Promissione of Doge Moro, 1462, translated by David Chambers.

At the symbolic heart of the Venetian state was the doge. However, his position of power was limited given that the ‘celebrations commissioned by the offices of the state firmly prioritised the laudation of the republic’.6 In essence, the doge was both a political and spiritual manifestation of state power; a servant of the republic. The collective government of the Venetian state was therefore committed to introducing legislation which impacted positively on their own self-image. The patronage of talented craftsmen, academics and creatives was a clever strategy used by the government to achieve such goals. Legal protection in exchange for loyalty of service was a staple feature within fifteenth-century agreements. Situated in the Stato di Archivio di Venezia, the Venetian Patent Law of 1474 is the oldest knowledge on record to contain legislation relating to copyright and protection. Arguably the official birth of intellectual property, the document is a fascinating example of how the Venetian state protected its own interests whilst granting social rights to individuals who excelled in their profession.

The superior tone adopted by the Venetian government in the administration of this law is notable within the opening sentence attributing the large flow of travelling merchants in the city to ‘its greatness and goodness’.7 The realisation of a positive self-image was at the heart of decisions made by Venetian lawmakers. First and foremostly, the men who are in question are those ‘apt in inventing and creating various ingenious contraptions’.8 This importantly signifies that the Pregadi were referring to specific, talented individuals who would be of benefit to stately ambitions as opposed to administering social rights to a collective group of citizens. In the context of the wider Renaissance, the rise in private patronage across mainland Europe ensured artists, craftsmen and entertainers remained loyal to a specific region. The Medici oligarchy in Florence and the d’Este court in Mantua are two good examples which lie in direct competition to Venice. Whilst the thriving courts on the mainland provided these individuals with an established position within their respective societies, Venice was a city whereby thousands travelled through as opposed to remain in. The introduction of a patent and protective system was the Venetian alternative to courtly patronage whilst also establishing the city as a centre of production as well as trade.

The provveditori di comun, who oversaw matters related to trade, later emphasised that the men in question are ones who invent for ‘no small utility and benefit for our state’.9 The process of qualifying for social rights is hence selective. As Walton recalls that ‘social rights have called for redistribution’, historiographical trends in research have looked beyond the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the marker for defining the legal administration of such rights in question.10 Article 22 of the Declaration can be used as a marker for comparison. Stating that ‘everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security … in accordance with the organisation and resources of each State’, the article stresses the importance of universal social protection.11 In Early Modern Venice, social welfare and provisions were not granted to every citizen in the city. Only ten percent of the population formed part of the nobility or cittadini which left a huge proportion of the city without basic social rights by contemporary standards. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the Patent Law of 1474 did grant privileges to those who were ‘in accordance with the… state’ as Article 22 suggests. The cooperation between the selected craftsmen and Venetian state offices exemplifies that individual cases were heard. Despite not being implemented on a universal level, the state still provided provisions for selected persons in the city. Therefore, there was limited evidence that social rights by the standards of the 1948 Declaration did exist in Renaissance Venice. Article 22 concludes that rights needed to allow for ‘the free development of his personality’.12 Similarities can be drawn from the state sanctioned attitudes towards inventors in the Patent Law where ‘any new or ingenious contraption’ was highly encouraged by the Pregadi.13 Whilst historians have attempted to stress the importance of 1948 on the scholarship of individual and collective rights, these insights highlight that elements of these declarations appeared centuries prior.

In exchange for their services, craftsmen were guaranteed protection. The legislation stresses an importance on punishing fraudulent replicas of products which ‘work and function’ for the benefit of the state.14 The Venetian Pregadi took accusations which revolved around counterfeit production extremely seriously. A staple product of growing luxury produced in the Veneto was Murano glass. An island a short boat journey away from the Venetian city, Murano was famed for its glass production and expert craftsmanship. The collective rights of glass workers in Murano were strictly protected by an agreement which prohibited any craftsmen from revealing the secrets of production to the outside world. This ensured that the quality and stylistic features of Murano blown-glass making remained unique and luxury - a valuable asset to the Venetian trading market into mainland Europe. Throughout the Renaissance, Venetian glassmaking was a protected industry up until 1612 when Antonio Neri published a manual titled L’arte vetraria in line with the consumer demand for the product.15 Nevertheless, Neri respected traditional Venetian practice by limiting ‘the impact the book had in fostering foreign competition’ as he left out certain details unique to the desired finish of Murano glassmaking products.16 Applying a similar process of analysis to the Patency Law, the 1474 document is an early example of copyright procedures introduced for mechanics, craftsmen and artists. From a contemporary standpoint, these professions fall under the category of skilled workers whose copyright protection can certainly be considered as a form of social rights. Nevertheless, unlike individuals who work privately today, these rights were restricted to outstanding individuals who worked for the benefit of the Venetian state.

Whether this Patency Law was applied successfully is another interesting question which arises from the document. Given the unique age of the manuscript, carefully preserved in the Archivio Stato di Venezia, there are a lack of other surviving documents which can be used in direct comparison. Furthermore, issues surrounding translation into vernacular Italian also contribute to the preservation of Early Modern documents. A collection of primary source anthologies on Venetian history, including Chambers and Pullans’ valuable Venice: A Documentary History, are valuable contributions towards the historiographical discipline. Within the aforementioned anthology, a document attributed to the Collegio in 1486 discusses copyright legislation in relation to selected published texts. The individual whose property rights are concerned - Marcus Antonius Sabellicus of Rome. Described by the legislative councillors as ‘a polished history worthy of immortality’, Sabellicus’ history of the city was deemed by the Senate as an important and prized work which contributed towards La Serenissima and the outward portrayal of Venetian republican virtue.17 Hence, Sabellicus was promised copyright protection in return.

‘We shall not permit anyone other than him to have it printed etc. as in that decree; furthermore we have also decreed that no one except Marcus Antonius himself may authorize the aforesaid work’18 ASV Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 13, ff. 118v, 145r., translated by Ruth and Peter Chavasse.

Similarities can be drawn between the previous Patency Law of 1474 with this document drafted by the Collegio. Firstly, the individuals who qualified for protection aligned with the interests of the state. In addition, by limiting the production of the product in question to the creator themself, the government had control over its distribution. As Sabellius is reassured by the councillors, ‘we shall not permit anyone other than him to have it printed’.19 From this comparative source analysis, I argue that the social rights of the individual were secondary to the ambitions of the state aiming to champion the city of Venice in a positive light. The 1486 copyright law is evidence that the 1474 edict was an impactful one favoured by the Venetian government because they wanted to apply its principles to authors and artists like Sabellicus as well as highly regarded craftsmen. However, were these laws successfully implemented across the Venetian republic?

Venetian law, administered by the Venetian government from the Palazzo Ducale, applied to many territories of the city’s extensive empire. The stato da mar regarded the Venetian maritime territories and the Terraferma describes the possessions which were on the Italian mainland. Some major obstacles to the administration of Venetian law in these territories were distance, the lack of competent officials and crime. Whilst the city of Venice fell at the political and legal heart of the republic, the dissemination of messages conveyed to territories which lay on the periphery of the empire was flawed. As the Pregadi state in their transcript, the law applies to ‘any land or place of ours’ which extends its administration to the colonial possessions of Venice from Koper and Cyprus to Bergamo and Brescia.20 Aristocratic and oligarchical violence on the Venetian Terraferma plagued the societies of the mainland in ‘a period of turbulent and consistent warfare’.21 Rural banditry, homicidal killings and sexual violence all prevailed in areas geographically astray from the city of Venice where a weak network of deployed government

officials were subject to corruption and bribery by local factions.22 These contextual circumstances are important because they are obstacles to the administration of Venetian law in these areas which, compared to the compact city of Venice, occupied a huge territory over both land and sea. Whilst primary source material relating to the regulation of copyright law across the empire is limited, it was unlikely that craftsmen and creatives working in these environments were able to benefit from these provisions. In many cases, moving to the city of Venice itself was a more feasible option because of the direct access to both an abundance of materials obtained from a global trading network and the noble patrons who resided there.

Following the Sack of Rome in 1527, Jacopo Sansovino was offered patronage and protection by the Venetian government to execute a series of architectural projects commissioned for Piazza San Marco. In return, Sansovino was provided with a safer working environment and materials funded by the state. By attracting Sansovino to Venice, in light of the unstable conditions whereby imperial forces invaded and looted Rome, the Doge and his councillors were able to embrace classicism into the visual dimension of the Serenissima. Unlike the social provisions made for citizens in the twenty-first century world, social rights were administered in order to benefit both the recipient and the awarding body. Much like the Loggetta produced by Sansovino for the Venetian government, the 1474 Patency Law underlines that ‘Our signoria shall be at liberty to take and use’ the contraptions which were specified.23 Even when the individual had the right to report fraudulent copyists, they were bound to ‘denounce it to any tribunal’ within the city of Venice itself.24 Therefore, the state was at the heart of dictating matters regarding both justice and property ownership - not the individual whose rights were in question.

It was a privilege to access the historic 1474 Patency Law in the Archivio Stato di Venezia in December 2024 given that it is the earliest surviving document of such an initiative known by historians to this day. This paper has sought to address how social rights through intellectual property documents were prevalent within an Early Modern society as opposed to taking the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a historiographical standpoint. Exceptional individuals enjoyed privileges and protection from the state in exchange for their services or access to their contraptions. However, the successful administration of these social rights must be severely questioned by a number of factors. Given that the state was selective in granting these privileges, social rights were by no means a universal conception. Furthermore, those who qualified for the protection of the 1474 Law living in Venetian dominions away from the city itself were unlikely to benefit from the conditions because of the lack of control government officials had on territories further afield. What the law makes extremely clear is how the state were to benefit from the copyright protection granted to the individual creative by monopolising control of the product and who sells and produces it. As the cases of Sansovino and Sabellicus later suggest, the state expanded their influence through similar legislations relating to the visual arts and production of humanist texts. In essence, this Patency Law forms part of a larger narrative of the Venetian Serenissima which ‘nurtured the development of the state and its republican identity’ throughout the Renaissance.25

Many thanks go to Professor Luca Mola and Professor Jonathan Davies of the University of Warwick for making the opportunity to visit the state archive in Venice possible. I would like to further thank both as reasons for me becoming fascinated with Venetian and Renaissance history and as motivation for me to choose this project in my final year as a member of the EUTOPIA Connected Learning Community.

By Ash Fowkes-Gajan

References:

¹ Ash Fowkes-Gajan, ‘The Symbols of the Serenissima: A Visual Manifestation of State Power and Authority in Sixteenth Century Venice’ (University of Warwick, 2025).

² Ibid.

³ United Nations Economic and Social Council, ‘Report of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights’, Geneva, 21 June 2006, p. 1.

⁴ Charles Walton, ‘Keynote Lecture: Between Redistribution and Theories of Abundance: Toward a Deep History of Social Rights’, EuTopia CoLeCo Legal History: Collective and Individual Rights in Legal History, 26 November 2024.

⁵ ‘Some restrictive obligations in the promissione of Doge Moro, 1462’, From the Latin. Selection from 127 clauses in BL Additional ms. 15816, in David Chambers and Brian Pullan, Venice: A Documentary History, 1450-1630 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p. 47.

⁶ Ash Fowkes-Gajan, ‘The Symbols of the Serenissima: A Visual Manifestation of State Power and Authority in Sixteenth Century Venice’ (University of Warwick, 2025), p. 38.

⁷ The Venetian Senate, ‘Venetian Patent Law - 19th March 1474’, translated by History Walks in Venice, Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Charles Walton, ‘Keynote Lecture: Between Redistribution and Theories of Abundance: Toward a Deep History of Social Rights’, EuTopia CoLeCo Legal History: Collective and Individual Rights in Legal History, 26 November 2024.

¹¹ United Nations, ‘Article 22’ in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948.

¹² Ibid.

13 The Venetian Senate, ‘Venetian Patent Law - 19th March 1474’, translated by History Walks in Venice, Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Francesca Trivellato, ‘Murano Glass, Continuity and Transformation (1400-1800)’, in At the Centre of the Old World: Trade and Manufacturing in Venice and the Venetian Mainland, 1400-1800 (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2006), p. 151.

¹⁶ Ibid, p. 152.

¹⁷ ASV Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 13, ff. 118v, 145r., ‘Copyright Legislation to protect Sabellicus’s History of Venice, 1486’, translated by Ruth and Peter Chavasse, in Venice: A Documentary History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p. 371.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ The Venetian Senate, ‘Venetian Patent Law - 19th March 1474’, translated by History Walks in Venice, Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

²¹ Ash Fowkes-Gajan, ‘How was violence expressed and controlled in the Republic of Venice in the Renaissance?’ (University of Warwick, 2024), p. 2.

²² Ibid, pp. 1-13.

²³ The Venetian Senate, ‘Venetian Patent Law - 19th March 1474’, translated by History Walks in Venice, Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Ash Fowkes-Gajan, ‘The Symbols of the Serenissima: A Visual Manifestation of State Power and Authority in Sixteenth Century Venice’ (University of Warwick, 2025), p. 1.

Bibliography

Chambers, David, and Pullan, Brian, Venice: A Documentary History, 1450-1630 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001)

Fowkes-Gajan, Ash, ‘How was violence expressed and controlled in the Republic of Venice in the Renaissance?’ (University of Warwick, 2024), pp. 1-13.

Fowkes-Gajan, Ash, ‘The Symbols of the Serenissima: A Visual Manifestation of State Power and Authority in Sixteenth Century Venice’ (University of Warwick, 2025), pp. 1-44.

The Venetian Senate, ‘Venetian Patent Law - 19th March 1474’, translated by History Walks in Venice, Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

Trivellato, Francesca, ‘Murano Glass, Continuity and Transformation (1400-1800)’, in At the Centre of the Old World: Trade and Manufacturing in Venice and the Venetian Mainland, 1400-1800 (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2006), pp. 143-183.

United Nations Economic and Social Council, ‘Report of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights’, Geneva, 21 June 2006, pp. 1-18.

United Nations, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948.

Walton, Charles, ‘Keynote Lecture: Between Redistribution and Theories of Abundance: Toward a Deep History of Social Rights’, EuTopia CoLeCo Legal History: Collective and Individual Rights in Legal History, 26 November 2024.