Crafting prestige through merchant marks, or how to create a company image in the Late Middle Ages ?

Abstract

This study explores how late medieval merchants used visual symbols—merchant marks—to construct reputation, trust, and prestige within Mediterranean trade networks (1387–1435). Based on 738 marks recorded by the Pisan notary Giuliano Scarsi ( Archivio di Stato di Firenze ), it analyses their communicative and economic functions in Italy and the Crown of Aragon. More than mere identifiers, these emblems signaled credibility, authenticated exchanges, and reduced information asymmetries. Influenced by heraldry, they merged professional and familial identities. Through a semiotic and economic-historical approach, the paper shows how such marks generated symbolic capital and institutional trust, anticipating modern corporate visual identity and illuminating how merchants made their enterprise visible and reliable in the late medieval Mediterranean economy.