From the literacy of the «colombara» to the culture of the Milanese painters in the Renaissance

Abstract

We propose some reflections on the spread of reading and writing skills among craftsmen, conveyed by the arrival of the vernacular language in literature. From the end of the thirteenth century, and even more so between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the craftsmen of Italian cities not only recorded their business in writing but also began to elaborate original works (chronicles, diaries, etc.). However, the traces of their writings are still scarce for some Italian regions, except for Tuscany, because of the difficulty of finding them among the archives. The documentation kept at the Archivio di stato di Milano allows for some further consideration of the use of the vernacular by a specific craft segment, by the painters active in the city between the 15th and 16th centuries.