A Venetian merchant in Poland

Abstract

Pietro Bicherano was born into a wealthy but plebeian Venetian family in the late 1370s. During his life, he would play many roles. Through his trade and ambassadorial activities, he connected Venice with Nuremberg, Wrocław, and Cracow. He worked as an agent for the famous Kress and Rummel companies of Nuremberg and had extensive dealings with the Medici bank. While he traded in dye, cloth, and silver, his primary occupation in Poland was the management of the Cracow salt mines. He was also called upon to act as ambassador to the king of Poland by both the Florentine Republic and the Venetian Senate. Yet, for all his success Pietro’s life holds a number of oddities. After voyaging abroad, he appears never to have returned back home, thus leaving behind a wife and four children. He lived the next 20 years of his life in Kraków yet resided always in rented rooms, never took up burgher citizen status, remaining always only and ever, Venetian. Pietro Bicherano was assuredly an exceptional individual, yet his life shows the growing connections between East Central Europe and Italy at the turn of the fifteenth century and much can be learned by following its course.