Renaissance Venice
Travellers who visited in Venice in the 15th,
16th and 17th century never failed to marvel at the
number of courtesans in the city. Thomas Coryat writing in 1608 was astonished
to note that there were as many as twenty thousand courtesans operating in
Venice and said that “many are esteemed so loose that they are said to open
their quivers to every arrow.”
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| Venetian Courtesans |
The courtesans often dressed in clothing that
had revealing cleavage to the point even where the breasts were completely
exposed. Travellers on occasion mistakenly thought these were the ordinary
female citizens of Venice. But just as much as they might condemn the numbers
and their behaviour, the travellers’ descriptions of Venetian daily life in
which the courtesan featured prominently the city is praised as an example of
civic and social harmony. Two myths lying side by side.
Venice in fact was a vibrant and complex city
then, filled with merchants profiting from expanded trade opportunities and
proud of its republic standing. The government was organized around a multitude
of magistracies and councils and ruled by a doge, elected by a closed patrician
group, called the Great Council.
The people were generally a sober lot and
the women of their class and the nobility were seldom seen in public. When they
did, they too were sombrely dressed, in dark colours. 
Venetian widow
Venice was also crowded
with people who worked at the shipyards, at the fisheries, the glassworks and
other manufacturers in this blossoming commercial centre. Housing was difficult
to find, even among the wealthier classes, and few had the luxury (at least in
the 15th and 16th century) of owning their own palazzo.
Most had apartments or rooms in buildings, and some of the poorer classes
shared rooms. These conditions among a
booming commercial centre created intense rivalries among the young men of
various trades. Such competition often gave rise to faction fighting- sometimes
fought desperately over bridges like the Rialto. Enemies of any class could be
despatched in a dark alley and tossed in the canal.
Poised between these two sides of Venice
were the courtesans. There were two classes of courtesans that existed in
Venice. The first, cortigna onesta,
honest courtesan or intellectual courtesan and the cortigna lume, the lower class prostitutes who lived near and
frequented the Rialto Bridge.
The women from the first class of courtesan,
the honest courtesan, were often born into patrician or merchant family they
were raised as educated and cultured women. But in a society that dictated
exorbitant dowries that could often bankrupt a family, extra daughters were
often given no opportunity to marry. They could go into a convent and become a
nun, but that still required a dowry, though not as large. They could remain in
the household an ageing spinster tending to family member, forever dependent
and submissive perhaps to a new mistress of the household if it should pass to
a brother and his wife. Or circumstances, like poverty from funding a dowry to
an older sister, or failed commercial activities could encourage a young woman
to consider the life of a courtesan. Often, in these situations, a courtesan
could end up being the sole support of their family. 
Venetian Courtesan
Among the Venetian men generally,
courtesans were seen as cultured women who provided entertainment for wealthy
noblemen and merchants. In Venice, a man
wouldn’t be expected to marry until well into his thirties and courtesans could
provide these young men pleasure and culture and hopefully disease free. An
older man might take a courtesan as his mistress and enjoy a less inhibited
sexual experience than he would from a wife who had most likely been raised in
a convent-like atmosphere.
Successful courtesans could enjoy a
luxurious life filled with parties and salons. They often moved in influential
circles and had access to artists, poets, politicians and the thinkers of the
day. In such circles a courtesan had the opportunity to wield influence if she
was skilled enough to do so. Aside from the potential for power and influence
the honest courtesan still faced the possibility of contracting a sexually
transmitted disease, something that observed no class barriers.
One of the most celebrated and well known Venetian
courtesans was Veronica Franco, born in 1546. Born to the courtesan, Paola
Fracassa and the merchant, Francesco Franco she also had three brothers. Her intellectual life began with sharing her
brothers' education by private tutors in the family home and while still in her
teens she married the physician Paola Fracassa. Probably an arranged marriage,
it ended badly shortly afterwards and Veronica was forced to support herself.
Veronica Franco
Franco became a cortigiana onesta (honest
courtesan) in the mid to late 1560s and soon became famed for the intellectual
and culture entertainments she provided. She continued her education by
frequenting literary gatherings of writers and painters in Venice during the
1570s and 1580s and mingled with politicians, poets, artists and thinkers. She
captured the interest of Domenico Venier (1517-1582), a Venetian poet and the
head of the most renowned vernacular literary academy in Venice, who became her
reader and protector. A frequent visitor to his private literary salon at Ca'
Venier (the Venier palace), Franco composed sonnets and capitoli in terza rima
for exchange with male poets.
By her mid-twenties, Franco was requesting
sonnets for publication from male poets for anthologies that she assembled to
commemorate men of the Venetian elite. One such volume, the Rime di diversi
eccellentissimi autori nella morte dell'Illustre Sign. Estor Marteninengo Conte
di Malapaga, in honor of the Count Martinengo, was published in 1575; she was
not only the editor but also included nine sonnets she herself had written.
In 1575, during the epidemic of plague that
ravaged the city, Veronica Franco was forced to leave Venice and lost much of
her wealth when her house and possessions were looted. On her return in 1577,
she defended herself with dignity before the Inquisition on charges of
witchcraft (a common complaint lodged against courtesans in those days). The
charges were dropped. She died in 1591.
