Being Brothers or Pretending To Be: Merchants, Artisans, Inn-keepers, Painters & Brothers in Seventeenth-Century Rome

Abstract

How important was it for merchants, artisans, inn-keepers and painters to have brothers and to work with them? By cross-referencing different sources (states of souls, testaments, inventories, court papers, compilations of legal and notary deeds), this article seeks to answer the question by taking some crucial aspects into consideration: daily life in the family home and other forms of cohabitation, the transmission of work tools and of vocations, the training of new generations and the support provided to family members in trouble. Seventeenth-century Rome is an interesting vantage point from which to investigate the importance of brothers' companies. The presence of the Papal Roman court extended employment opportunities, not only for courtiers, artists and servants who moved from one embassy to another and from one cardinal's court to another, but also for all those men (more men than women) on the margins who were able to earn some money from the conspicuous consumption of the upper classes. The flexibility of the labour market and the widespread phenomenon of male cohabitation could undermine the strength of family companies.