Piero Pantella from Piacenza and the Textile Industry of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) in the First Half of the Fifteenth Century

Abstract

By the first half of the fifteenth century 4,000 rolls of cloth a year were produced in Dubrovnik for a total value of about 600,000 ducats, in other words, an average annual production of a Ragusan factory by far exceeded its Florentine counterpart. The article elucidates the background of the rapid expansion of textile industry in this period and its leading figures, Piero Pantella being one of them, as well as the specific organisation of the production process characterised by the concentration and unification of several phases in one place that greatly differed from the traditional textile production of Florence.