Artisans of the Body in Early Modern Italy - (Gender in History) by Sandra Cavallo (Paperback)

About the Book

This study of barbers-surgeons and other artisans involved in the care and appearance of the body - jewellers, tailors, wigmakers, upholsterers - sheds light on the strong sociocultural affinities that existed in the Early Modern period between these apparently unrelated trades, challenging the divide between medical and non-medical occupations.

From the Back Cover

This groundbreaking study explores the role of those involved in various aspects of the care, comfort and appearance of the body in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Italy, bringing to light the strong cultural affinities and social ties between barber-surgeons and the apparently distant trades of jeweller, tailor, wigmaker and upholsterer.

Drawing on contemporary understandings of the body, the author shows that shared concerns about health and well-being permeated the professional cultures of these medical and non-medical occupations. At the same time the detailed analysis of the life-course, career patterns and family experience of 'artisans of the body' offers unprecedented insight into the world of the urban middling sorts.

The book will represent essential reading for scholars and students of gender, family and urban history in the early modern age, and will equally appeal to historians of the body and of the medical occupations.

Review Quotes

"Cavallo has written a fresh and inventive book that recasts our understanding of surgeons and much of medical practice in the early modern period." - Mary E. Fissell, "Economic History Review"
"The book is a meticulous study . . . and has the merit of interweaving several lines of inquiry into one coherent picture." - Guido Giglioni, "Reviews in History"
"This vivid and extremely readable study offers an important model with which future explorations of medical practitioners and of early modern constructions of gender, identity, family, and kinship will have to engage." - Silvia De Renzi, "Renaissance Studies"
"This is an important book that fundamentally recasts our ideas about early modern artisanal life and the relative importance of the various medical practicioners of the time. It is deeply researched and well argued." - Anita Guerrini, Oregon State University, "Technology and Culture Review"

About the Author

Sandra Cavallo is Professor of Early Modern History at Royal Holloway, University of London