Il Libro discepoli e pigione del tintore Giunta di Nardo Rucellai

"Il Libro discepoli e pigione" ("The Employees and Rent Book"), preserved in the Salviati Archive of the Scuola Normale Superiore, is the oldest wage accounting book of a Florentine workshop ever found and the only one available for the period prior to the Plague of 1348. Held in the dye shop of Giunta di Nardo Rucellai, entrepreneur and prominent figure in the Florence of those years, the record preserves a precious testimony for the history of wage work in one of the main textile cities of medieval Europe. Beyond a seemingly incomprehensible form of accounting writing, the book contributes to our knowledge of the working life (and not only of that) of a category of generally anonymous men: the wage workers.