Colour Sellers Part I: Venice’s Vendecolori
Venice’s location at the north of the Adriatic sea meant that for centuries Venetians made their wealth as the middle-men between Europe and the Middle East and Asia.
Pigments were a significant part of this trade. Venetian merchants traded in Indigo from India, Lapis Lazuli from Uzbekistan, Azurite from the Balkans, Dragon’s Blood (a red resin) from Damascus and gold leaf from Sudan.
Thanks to the city’s position as a hub in this international pigment trade, a new profession emerged in Venice at the very end of the 1400s, when dealers started to set up specialist shops dedicated to pigments and artists materials. While in other cities customers would continue to find such products within apothecaries or grocers shops, in Venice artists and craftspeople began to go to the vendecolori, the colour sellers.
They were found primarily in the Rialto neighbourhood, the commercial heart of the city, and served the diverse artistic industries that existed in Venice. Not only painters needed pigments: the glass blowers of Murano, already a centuries old industry, were famed for their coloured glass; the workshops making silk and velvet needed pigments to dye their products and the illuminators, scribes and printers who worked in Venice’s renowned publishing and book selling industry also came to the colour sellers to replenish their palettes. With such a multitude of specialist customers, it was worthwhile for merchants to specialise in pigments, and for many this proved a lucrative line of work.
Records show several colour sellers operating as family businesses over several generations, spanning decades and sometimes more than a century of business. Such prosperous examples include members of the di Mutti family, who ran a shop on the Calle delle Acque at the sign of the Campana (bell), the Zerbina family who operated on the Riva dal Vin, to be found at the sign of the Rioda (wheel), the Bortolotti family who traded in several locations at the sign of the Stella (star) and the della Scala family, who operated for well over a century at the sign of the Scala (ladder) on the Calle dei Stagnieri. This street in particular was home to a high concentration of colour sellers. Other locales were the Rialto bridge itself and St Mark’s square, and another significant cluster was in the piazza in front of San Giacomo di Rialto.
By 1600 there were over 40 colour sellers of various size and speciality operating in the city, and while the vast majority of names in the records are of male proprietors, Anna Venerio, associated with a shop on Campo San Luca at the sign of Gesù (Jesus), proves that women were also represented in the profession.
Venice’s relevance to pigments and the pigment trade is recalled by names such as “Venetian Red” and “Venetian White” which are commonly found on tubes of paint of watercolour pans, but the dedicated vendecolori have almost vanished from the city. There is one exception: Arcobaleno Venezia (arcobaleno means rainbow) is a shop on Calle delle Botteghe, near Campo Santo Stefano. The shop stocks over 60 pigments as well as binding mediums, alongside other artisan products still made in Venice such as calligraphy pens, leather aprons and brass handles, and door furniture cast in an historic foundry.
When Arcobaleno Venezia opened in the early 2000s it picked up where the vendecolori had left off and proved that Venice’s link to pigments is difficult to sever. It’s impossible to imagine a time when Venice will not provide inspiration to painters and artists, and for as long as they are found by the waterways, arcades, passageways and palaces, so too will their pigments.
There is only one known portrait of a Venetian colour seller. It dates from 1561-2 and depicts Alvise Gradignan della Scala. It was painted by a prominent artist to whom he supplied pigments, Tiziano Vecellio, otherwise known as Titian. Alvise was likely born between 1515 and 1520 and died in 1581. In this portrait he is wearing a typical Venetian vesta, a long, black, toga-like garment which reached to the ground. This portrait is likely to have been painted to commemorate his serving as an officer on the Banca, the supervisory committee of the confraternity of Saint Rochus (Scuola Grande di San Rocco), one of the six large confraternities of Venice. His tray of pigments is clear to see on the windowsill on the left side of the painting. A double sided silver scoop lies across it, ready to dispense the coloured powders.
Tiziano Vecellio (Titian), Portrait of a Man with a Palm Leaf
Oil on canvas; 138 x 116 cm
Image Copyright: SKD (Dresden State Art Collections) Photo: Estel/Klut