ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to apply a broadly geographical lens to a consideration of print in the city in the sixteenth century, considering both the movement of popular print, and of the people that made, sold, performed and consumed it in urban spaces. This approach is an extremely useful way to bring to light the dissemination of popular print in particular, an aspect of print culture that tends to be hidden by more traditional approaches to book history. The chapter explores how the mechanisms of producing and disseminating popular print insinuated themselves into the economic, political and ritual heart of Venice by the early sixteenth century. The operations of less eminent but still markedly prolific producers and distributors of popular printed material merit further investigation. The link between performance and the selling of popular print, manifest in the case of Francesco Faentino, has been alluded to several times.
