The secret Perfume: Technology and the Organization of Soap Production in Northern Italy between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Soap has been noted since antiquity; in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt numerous testimonies confirm the use of detergents obtained by the alkaline hydrolysis processing of vegetal and animal fats. It was only through the Arabian expansion that these detergents started becoming widespread and used more extensively for cleansing the body, but above all in certain production cycles within the fabric industry. More precisely, it was the areas touched by the Arabian dominance where soap production met a growing development starting in the 10th century. In Italy, this activity was diffused not only in Sicily and in Southern regions, but also in the North. It was present particularly in Venice where, thanks to ongoing economic trade and political development with the East, soap was imported and successively also its production techniques so as to distribute it in Central and Northern Italy. In this paper, the path taken by artisans from different urban centers (between the XVI and the XVIII centuries) will be discussed, along with the mastering of the Venetian production techniques in other North-Central Italian cities and the resistances that very often slowed down the diffusion of the product or provoked the introduction of particular techniques that were for the most part different from the original model. In fact, soap production involved many professional figures and had evident contact points with some weaving factories of primary importance that were within city meat and animal skin economies. The analysis will be conducted by the study of various particular settings (Rome, Bologna, Mantua, etc.), demonstrating how the diffusion of production techniques was legitimately and proportionally based on the institutional and economic structures.