Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550-1650. by James R. FarrReview by: Barbara Beckerman DavisThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Winter, 1989), pp. 681-682Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2541315 .

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Book Reviews 681

Schama's essay, "Culture as Foreground," further attempts to characterize Dutch landscape, describing it as unique to the century and the place. The reader should see Dutch "realism" as an appreciation of natural surroundings made from a patriotic and historical position. His essay fits well with Sutton's, as both have attempted to describe the paintings as a part of a larger cultural context. This approach can become bothersome reading, yet still be valid. Such a position is both logical and welcome in the discipline of art history which still too often resorts to connoisseurial fussing. Obviously art was and is an expression of the culture in which it was created. Perhaps these writers felt that one could enjoy works that were also an explosion of pictorial representation on one's own and leave the theorizing to them.

The final two essays by Bruyn and Chong are probably far more comprehensible to the general reader. In discussing another cultural expression in the landscape, that of inherent and implied scriptural references, Bruyn manages to continue with the general theme of the earlier discussions without belaboring the point. The reader will probably most enjoy his treatment of Rembrandt. Chong comments on major and lesser Dutch patrons who purchased landscapes. He gives an interesting description of types of landscapes purchased by the middle class. He also includes some data on relative prices for kinds of landscapes. His description of the market for landscapes was a quite refreshing end to the essays. One wishes he had written a more lengthy study. Chong's discussion, which is in part based on research materials gathered by Michael Montais, is lively and not a grouping of dry statistics.

This catalog contains a large proportion of baroque paintings, but enough early artists and historical background are included to make it interesting to renaissance specialists.

Jane P. Davidson University of Nevada - Reno

Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550-1650. James R. Farr. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988. xii + 298 pp. $34.95.

Recent scholarship on early modern European artisans has focused on popular mentality, ritual or religious affiliation rather than their economic and social evolu- tion. James R. Farr's book counterbalances this trend with a rich and detailed study of both subjects using a wide variety of documentation from the municipal and departmental archives located in Dijon.

During the period 1550 to 1650 Dijon changed from an important manufactur- ing center to the administrative capital of Burgundy and the hub of commercial activity. Service crafts catering to the new judicial and fiscal elite replaced older industries, but the growing importance of the wine trade also assured the expansion of a host of related activities. Dijon's artisans, especially master craftsmen, prospered from these changes even though much of the period was defined by economic crisis. By the 1640s artisanal wealth clustered around the middle range of taxpayers with

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682 Sixteenth CenturyJournal / XX no. 4

less than one-third vulnerable to subsistence poverty and slightly under one-fifth enjoying real economic ease. Many also changed their residence, moving closer to their wealthy patrons, abandoning the poorer districts to their less well-off brethren as well as the marginal poor, from whom they were equally anxious to dissociate themselves.

Although Farr is aware of the continuing importance of the guild, that is not the aspect of artisanal experience he emphasizes in this book. His central thesis is that the late sixteenth and early decades of the seventeenth century saw the formation of a self-conscious nascent class of master artisans; his focus is on them and only tangentially on journeymen and women. These master artisans were able to unite politically outside the guild to achieve shared economic objectives, while their similar economic and social strategies also suggest a common set of attitudes and goals. In the first three chapters of the book Farr plots out their behavioral patterns using rigorous methods of statistical analysis. Master artisans defined themselves by being exclusive, exclusionary, and parochial in limiting guild membership, by their taste for acquiring property intro muros rather than rural lands as they had done in the sixteenth century, and by practicing fairly rigid endogamy in marriage alliances which, however, did not include guild endogamy. Not surprisingly, their attempts to anchor themselves solidly in Dijon's social and economic firmament pushed them to forge ties of patronage with the local elite, especially members of the legal world who were clearly eclipsing the city's merchants in political clout and prestige.

The last three chapters deal with the cultural world of the artisan, his changing relationship to authority and the value systems operating in the neighborhood. Of fundamental importance was the role honor played in mediating the artisans' responses in the public sphere. Their greater sense of propriety is also shown in their new willingness to settle these disputes in a law court instead of the violent confrontations so characteristic of the sixteenth century. Artisans may have remained a turbulent group, but they were slowly undergoing a civilizing process of their own, paralleling and possibly caused by, their enhanced ability to buy into the social and economic world of Dijon. For this reason Farr plays down the role of the Counter-Reformation as a tempering force, although it was apparent in other aspects of their lives, notably in fostering the higher literacy rates of men and women, in curtailing disorderly behavior, and in religious expression.

This is a challenging book that does not quite succeed. Farr's insistence on a nascent class of master artisans seems superfluous; their behavior is that of a social group. Even here Farr may have de-emphasized corporate solidarities too drastically, particularly in residence patterns, while the absence of guild endogamy in marriage alliances might be a sign of their strength. Secondly, Farr has sampled only 25 percent of the notarials extant; at points his documentation is too slender to support his conclusions. But my major criticism centers on how many master aritsans were enjoying real prosperity. Nowhere does Farr mention artisan indebtedness, and he never comes to terms with the effects of high taxation in eroding wealth. Neverthe- less, flawed though it is, this is an undeniable contribution to early modern French studies.

Barbara Beckerman Davis Antioch College

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