ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a key criterion which was used to determine the dividing line between social acceptability and social unacceptability, association with arte meccanica et manuale, and, more specifically the place of 'touch' in defining the social status of a woman according to the activities carried out by her father and paternal and maternal grandfathers. In this sense it is a discussion of social boundaries within the early modern city, how they were defined, and the extent to which these definitions were blurred by social realities. As an exercise in social space, it demonstrates that, rather than being characterised by distinctive groupings, the upper levels of Venetian society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries represented overlapping spaces, where what was shared, be it life-style or membership of kinship networks, was more important than what was not, such as the monopoly of political power in the hands of the hereditary patriciate.
