MYTHOLOGICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE RENAISSANCE CORTEGIANA

In 1608, an intrepid Englishman by the name of Thomas Coryat followed the siren song South to Venice, visiting its churches, palaces, and monuments, but also another equally celebrated tourist attraction: the homes of the city's most fabled courtesans. The traveller had entered the "Paradise of Venus," wherein the mistress "comes to thee decked like the Queene and Goddesse of love, in so much that thou wilt thinke she made a late transmigration from Paphos, Cnidos, or Cythera, the auncient habitations of Dame Venus." Coryat's arrival in Italy coincided with the decline of that very unique category of elite prostitute who was known as, and chose to call herself, an "honest" or "honored" courtesan, in recognition of her elevated social position and special talents. Responsible for mold-ing herself into a marketable object, the courtesan created an image to suit the tastes of a clientele saturated with womanly ideals drawn from antiquity and tinged with humanism and Neoplatonism. Modelled after the classic hetaera, the onorata promised not only sexual delight but also aesthetic enchantments, weaving a masterful web of cultivation, grace, and beauty. She resembled no one as much as the ladies of the court in dress, mannerisms, and social function, entertaining with her conversation, song, poetry, and musical accomplishments. "Decked" like "a second Cleopatra"--in the words of our voyager--she could "enchaunt" with the "melodious notes that she warbles out upon her lute" accompanied by a "heart-tempting" voice, or speak with a "Rhetorical tongue" used to captivate and ensnare.[1] It was her profession to embody the aristocratic repertoire of desirable traits in all areas save chastity.

Rooted in their historical moment, the courtesans allied themselves to the hegemonic class, repeating its visible signs without any motivation to emerge from a self-imposed cultural conformity. But, within that historical moment, they were protagonists. Blessed with eloquent classical names by far-sighted mothers or professional requirements, these sixteenth century Tullias, Lucrezias, Cornelias, and Giulias were a significant, if minor, presence in the world of art. As friends and mistresses of intellectuals, poets, and painters, they became artistic subjects. If blessed with some talent, they exploited it, becoming protagonists of their own writing. These resurrected Aspasias were often versed in the vernacular literary tradition and in Greco-Roman mythology, possessing just enough familiarity with the major classical writers and philosophers to appear cultivated, although such knowledge was often gained through popular translations and abridgements rather than direct contact with the originals. As was the case with her dress and manners, the courtesan followed the fashion. To display her culture, she joined the legions of dilettante petrarchisti, putting pen to paper in the manufacture of sonnets dedicated to love and penitence, well-rhymed and melodious madrigals, and scores of elegantly drafted letters.

Few works by courtesans have survived. Generally speaking, the onesta saw art both as a means to permanent fame and as an instrument to achieve practical and, there-fore, transient ends. In an environment that could be hostile and dangerous, words and oils were visible signs of her status, translating into money and distinction. Therefore, it is plausible that Marc'Antonio Casanova was factual in his assertion that the famous Raffaello Sanzio had painted the equally reknowned courtesan Imperia (c. 1480/85-1512) as Venus, either in the decoration of the facade of her elegant home, as stated by historian Gnoli, or in a painting commissioned by the wealthy banker Agostino Chigi, Imperia's lover and Raffaello's patron and friend, as proposed by scholar Pio Pecchiai. Casanova recorded the event in a Latin epigram: "Vulcanus nudam Imperian quam vidit: Apelles/ Aspexit nudam quando, ait, hic Venerem?" (When Vulcan saw Imperia nude he asked: when has Apelles seen Venus nude? [In Pecchiai 23]). The terms of comparison are relevant: Raffaello is equal to the legendary Apelles because of their similar talent while the nude Imperia is comparable to Venus in the perfection of her body. The courtesan's transfigured effigy offers an emblematic representation which must be interpreted. The painting is both a portrait and a mythical icon: a billboard or personal manifesto for Imperia's contemporaries to read and a symbol of eternal beauty in which the courtesan and the goddess merge.

In the image of the nude goddess, Imperia defines herself as a divinity among mortals. Like Venus, she dispenses pleasure and splendor in their most refined and aesthetic expressions. The representation of a courtesan as the icon of love is a natural denouement whose roots lay in the Greek interpretation of Aphrodite, the deity responsible for all sexual desire. In fact, the hetairai of antiquity regularly posed for sculptors and painters, in a natural coupling of Aphrodite and prostitutes.

This goddess of love extended her patronage to whores. Look up Greek words derived from her name and you find that aphrodiastikos means lecherous, that aphrodiazein meant to copulate, that aphrodisia were brothels, and that a lessee of a public brothel was an aphrodiastes (Grigson 19).

For the Humanists of Imperia's entourage, the brilliant courtesan resembled the divine goddess far more than any streetwalker could. A legend in life, her mystique only grew after death, a suicide for love. For centuries Raffaello's female representations have been scrutinized for traces of the unforgettable courtesan of the early Cinquecento, her features imagined in several intellectual as well as erotic portraits: the Sappho or the Calliope of the Vatican "Parnassus," the Phrygian Sibyl in Santa Maria della Pace, the "Galatea" of Chigi's villa, La Farnesina, even the kneeling worshipper of the "Transfiguration." These attributions are uncertain but the disposition is clear-cut: the mythic Imperia symbolizes Woman. Whether it is Woman as Poet, Muse, Prophet, or Nymph, all are exceptional female figures, rendered in extraordinary circumstances. In the enduring pictorial representations, the protagonist rises to a level of significance which is superior because it is metahistorical. It is a fitting tribute to a woman admired and desired even in death, notwithstanding (or due to?) her position as a cortigiana onesta. It is also possible that the veneration of her contemporaries was based on Imperia's splendrous beauty and attainability--possessing the courtesan was akin to entering a mythic reality. This apotheosis is captured in one of her celebratory eulogies:

Dii duo magna duo dederant munera Romae:

Imperium Mavors et Venus Imperiam. . . .

Hos contra steterunt Mors et Fortuna, rapitque

Fortuna imperium, mors rapit Imperiam.

Imperium luxere patres, nos luximus ipsi hanc:

Illi orbem, nos nos cordaque perdidimus.

(The gods gave Rome two great gifts: Mars gave her the Empire and Venus [gave] Imperia. . . Death and Fortune were against them: Fortune took away the Empire, and Death [took] Imperia. Our fathers wept over the Empire, and we too wept over her: they lost [the Empire] while we, we lost our hearts.) [2]

The iconographic coupling of exceptional oneste with mythological figures was commonplace in Cinquecento art and literature. In Venice, the relationship between painters, writers, and courtesans was particularly friendly. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that many sensual feminine portrayals have been interpreted as idealized portraits of Imperia's successors. In "Flora, Goddess and Courtesan," Julian Held offers an analysis of Renaissance iconography associated with this particular pagan divinity. The art historian points out that "the close connections between Venus and Flora has always been recognized, "both goddesses being fundamentally voluptuous," concluding that "the Venetian type of female half-length figures, among them the various so-called 'Floras' . . . have often been thought to be portraits of courtesans." These are neither disrespectful nor lascivious but, like Tiziano's Flora, "the picture itself should be considered as an important piece of evidence for the respect and admiration paid to the leading courtesans during the Renaissance" (203, 212, 213). Another famous portrait, Giorgione's "Laura," fits into this category of com-plimentary courtesan likenesses according to Jaynie Anderson, a specialist in Venetian painting: "The laurel wreath behind Laura appears to be a pointed reference to her profession, as pointed as are the flowers held by Titian's Flora" (156). Pointed, because both myrtle and flowers (especially roses, as in Botticelli's "Primavera") are Venusian attributes. Another art historian, Elizabeth Cropper, compares Parmigianino's painting of the courtesan Antea--"a cult name for Aphrodite" associated with courtesans since antiquity--to the painter's "Madonna of the Long Neck" and "Madonna of the Rose." Cropper concludes that "if beauty is really the source of grace, and if the smile of a beautiful woman can truly open the gates of Paradise, then the ultimate source of that grace, and the most efficacious of those smiles, is to be found in the Virgin, the Queen of Heaven, and the most perfect cortegiana of all" (392).

The courtesans themselves did not aspire as high as Mary, but they held the keys to earthly paradises of their own, well aware of the power of their charms and the sway of beauty in a society saturated with Platonic thought and images. Nor did they shun comparison with the Queen of Love or lesser divinities. Tullia D'Aragona, known as the "cortegiana de li accademici," urged her poet-lovers to promote her metamorphosis from professional woman to deity. Girolamo Muzio, for one, immortalized her variously as the "Belladonna" of his poem cycle, as the nymph Thirrenia in the Egloghe Amorose, and finally, as the muse Thalia. Undertaken at the courtesan's personal request, this last metamorphosis reveals not only his affection and respect but also her ambitions. The nominal transformation was not inspired by mere coquettishness, as documented in Muzio's letter to Antonio Mezzabarba:

Io aveva per un tempo celebrata la signora. Tullia sotto nome di Tirrhenia; e un giorno con lei essendo, e ragionando di quegli studi, de' quali ella si è cotanto dilettata e diletta tuttavia, entrammo a parlar delle Muse, de' loro nomi e delle loro virtù. . . . [ella] mi disse: "Già sono più giorni che io ho un mio concetto nell'animo, il quale poi che ora mi viene in proposito, io il ti voglio pur dire. Tu mi hai lungamente cantata con nome di Tirrhenia, e io vorrei che tu mi mutassi nome e appellassimi Talia; ma che lo facessi in guisa che si conoscesse che Tirrhenia e Talia sono una cosa istessa. Pensavi ora tu del modo."[3]

Apparently dissatisfied with the name of an insignificant nymph, D'Aragona--who claimed her father was a princely cardinal and wore her Ciceronian name proudly--appro-priated that of the muse of bucolic poetry, a name also belonging to one of the Graces, the givers of delight, who were often represented holding roses and sprigs of myrtle--Aphrodite's signs. It was a carefully meditated exchange: the re-baptized Tullia-Thirrenia-Thalia was now directly associated with both art and love through the iconography of her new literary appellation. The phonetic cor-respondence of the names Tullia-Thalia merely prefigures the profound assimilation of the two identities. The Graces were intimate with the Muses and also attended Eros, Aphrodite, and Dionysius, the most sensual of gods. Thalia was the Grace of abundance but she was also a cultural symbol. "The Graces, like love itself, and like Aphrodite, tended to be taken from religion into philosophy, or into metaphorical states between the two: goddesses, as time went on, less of the glances of love than of the felicities of culture" (Grigson 92). In verse, D'Aragona becomes the servant of love, pleasure, and pulchritude and the emblem of that same amatory poetry of which she is protagonist: concurrently signified and signifier. The courtesan's transfiguration is deliberate and self-determined: Muzio is her instrument. Although other lovers and friends would further her reputation with their rhymes, none could equal this calculated ascent to the mythological firmament. Some years after the romantic break with Muzio, the aging Benedetto Varchi depicted D'Aragona as a lithe pastoral "Filli" to his "Damone," a complimentary transformation given the courtesan's mature age. Less creative admirers opted for the commonplace but quite acceptable comparisons with Sappho, Corinne, and Camilla, as well as the indirect but pervasive associations with the Petrarchan Laura. They were typical compliments in the courtly lexicon of the day but they gave a patina of worth to the courtesan's ambiguous reality.

In the last decades of the sixteenth century, Veronica Franco (1546-1591) embraced the traditional coupling of courtesans and Venus in her own verse, readily comparing herself to the pagan goddess of love, understood in her profane attributes: no other woman in the Cinquecento wrote more directly, less conventionally, or more ero-tically, of sexual love. Conceived under the sign of Venus, Franco's Terze Rime deal with love in its multiple emotional states: joy, desire, jealousy, separation, fear of abandonment, pleasure, and sense of loss. Although Amore is often present, as protagonist or theme, the courtesan's capitoli are not love poems, although they are broadly concerned with the issues of loving and feminine beauty. Unlike most contemporary verse by women, Franco's is not exclusively petrarchan, but somewhat "a-petrarchan," to borrow Rocco Scrivano's valid definition (204). Even compositions focusing on love are devoid of Christian symbolism and the motifs of contrition and spirituality typical of much Renaissance lyricism. Divinity in the Terze Rime is fundamentally pagan, mythological, and reminiscent of Latin poets. In compositions such as the long georgic poem dedicated to a friend's country estate, classical figures roam through the fields, woods, and streams in Ovidian profusion. In this lyric universe, nature takes on human shapes and emotions under its reigning numen, Venus, in the un-folding glory of her womanly beauty. Femininity is pervasive, even Franco's beloved Venice is transformed into "Adria," a realm of love where sea nymphs and demigods sweeten the salt waters with their delights: "Venere in cerchio ancor de gli altri Dei/ Scende dal Ciel . . . /Con l'alme Gratie in compagnia di lei."[4]

Venus is inferior to no god in this poetic universe. Franco's persona emerges as the priestess of love, as is clearly suggested by the first two capitoli of the col-lection. These paired lyrics form the beginning chapter of a continuing tenzone, or poetic exchange, between the female persona and her suitor-interlocutor.[5] The male voice is the first to speak in the difficult attempt to seduce (poetically) the unresponsive object of his desire. In a series of mythological analogies, he likens the coveted Veronica to Venus, Apollo, and the Muses; his subject is a fusion of art and love that resembles Muzio's creation, Tullia-Thalia. Attracted to the voluptuous body of the beloved, the male speaker has the sensual love goddess in mind, the Venere terrestre who offers profane pleasures, not the celeste, who incarnates sacred love: the beloved is described "in letto" dispensing "delitie"(#I). The introductory capitolo to the Terze Rime concludes with an incitation to Veronica, unyielding icon that she is, to remain in the service of Venus (love/sex) and not abandon it for the devotion to Apollo (art). In her response, the courtesan Franco reprimands the lover for his disjunction of passion and poetry through an agile game of words and meanings. The female voice rejoins the previously se-vered terms, reuniting Venus and Apollo, thus continuing the amorous dispute by manipulating conventional terms of comparison. Borrowing from the courtly tradition, she first urges the admirer to be studious and virtuous--thereby worthy of the (sexual) love she dispenses parsimoniously. His reward will be her (physical) beauty, dedicated to his happiness: "la mia bellezza/ . . . Spenderò poscia in vostra contentezza" (#II). Neither platonic Venus nor stil novistic donna angelicata, Veronica promises pagan delights. Like the Aphrodite of ancient myth, she will surrender body and soul in a mythic encounter; her sweetness, she explains, is best expressed in bed.

The bed is the locus of the love Venere/Veronica offers, but access is only guaranteed by the virtue (understood in its Latin, not Christian, definition) expressed by the supplicant. To validate her position, Franco recreates the tale of the loves of Venus and Mars, altering its message by substituting the god of poetry for the god of war. The analogy vindicates the courtesan's sexuality by associating it with the transcendence of art and the immortality of myth.

Febo, che serve a l'amorosa Dea,

E in dolce guideron da lei ottiene

Quel, che via più, che l'esser Dio, il bea,

A rivelar nel mio pensier ne viene

Quei modi, che con lui Venere adopra,

Mentre in soavi abbracciamenti il tiene;

Ond'io instrutta a questi so dar opra

Sì ben nel letto, che d'Apollo a l'arte,

Questa ne va d'assai spatio di sopra;

E 'l mio cantar, e 'l mio scriver in carte

S'oblia da chi mi prova in quella guisa,

Ch'a suoi seguaci Venere comparte. (#II)

The intercourse of the gods symbolizes the union of poetry and pleasure, suggesting that the love of art can lead to the mastery of the art of love. But, as occurs elsewhere in the Terze Rime, the female element domi-nates, signalling the pre-eminence of Venus. Veronica Franco's priorities are explicitly stated and her sexual nature is confirmed through the literal, rather than the figurative, interpretation of myth, an interpretation that legitimizes sexual relations and, consequently, her own existence. The honest courtesan is devotee of the goddess of love, by profession and by choice. In Renaissance prosody, such an analogy reflected a complex interweaving of linguistic and symbolic codes derived from literary tradition, theology, and Christianized ancient philosophy. In this context, eroticism could be interpreted spiritually; even the professional of sex could participate in the realm of divine love.

In a century saturated with the Platonic/Petrarchan idiom, it was not difficult to couple physical attrac-tiveness and worth. The seductive charms of these practitioners of love would naturally lead their admirers to associate them with the Platonic Good. Didn't the cour-tesans already possess its correlative, Beauty? In Il Libro del Cortegiano, Bembo synthesizes Neoplatonic belief: "da Dio nasce la bellezza ed è come circulo, di cui la bontà è il centro; e però come non po essere circulo senza centro, non po esser bellezza senza bontà" (335). The courtesans and their admirers could well ask themselves who contributed more to the actual, tangible fruition of love and beauty than the cultivated oneste, in a clear subversion of the Platonic definitions of these terms. In the words of Adriana Chemello:

Se la donna di palazzo, rinviando alle teorie neoplatoniche e alla dottrina del fin amour poteva essere considerata il punto più alto di idealizzazione e concettualizzazione dell'amore, la cortigiana, d'altro canto, conservando gran parte delle doti di cortesia, raffinatezza, bellezza, ingegnosità e cultura, aggiunge a tutto ciò la capacità di sedurre e la disponibilità ad amare, diventando un soggetto storico reale, una protagonista. (Chemello 127)

To be such a protagonist in the elite environment of courtly society, the courtesan had to emulate the aris-tocratic society that frequented her salon. Born neither to position nor privilege, she rendered herself desirable by replicating the behavioral norms in force. The successful onesta imitated the external characteristics required for achieving social esteem: publicly acting the lady and transforming her home into a miniature Urbino where she discussed Plato and Petrarca, Ovid and Bembo, love and merit, like the most accomplished of palace dwellers. She had entered the process of acculturation open to women of the upper echelons but generally closed to the proletariat from which most prostitutes emerged. For the cortigiana onesta a public facade of dignity and respectability was of paramount importance, for it was easy to slip from glorification to vilification. A Veronica Franco could be declared a goddess by one admirer--with a charming word-play on her given name, "Vera, unica al mondo eccelsa Dea" (#VII)--while falling prey to detractors and moralists only too willing to defame and humiliate not the goddess but the whore, as in this parody of the line just quoted: "Veronica, ver unica puttana."[6]

Identification with nymphs, divinities, sirens, and savantes polished the courtesan's veneer of socio-economic success. But the ultimate apotheosis was attained in the trattati d'amore and in lyric poetry. What better means to achieve legitimacy than to be associated with the celestial Venus of Platonic thought? The philosophic code of Platonism and its literary counterpart, Petrarchism, supply the lexicon and themes for works authored by courtesans and for others in which courtesans appear as subjects. Such topoi are actually reinterpreted to suit the writer's personality. Even the outspoken Franco utilizes conventional vocabulary in both verse and prose--when convenient. Aspiring, current, or past lovers are sublimated in the popular idiom of the day, thereby achieving immediate elevation by using the recognized currency of praise. Franco's male subjects can be depicted in spiritual terms according to the incoporeal inclinations of Neoplatonic musings ("D'alta virtù la divina fattura,/ Che 'n voi s'annida come in dolce stanza,/ Il cui splendor m'accende oltra misura") only to be transported from the ether of soul-love to the spaces of jealous sex-love a few stanzas later: "Oimè, che d'altra standosi nel letto/ Me lascia raffredar sola, e scontenta/ Colma d'affanni, e piena di sospetto" (#20). Whether victorious like Venus or abandoned like Ariadne, Franco's persona manifests love in the union, rather than division, of body and soul, issuing from the Terze Rime like the nude goddesses of Venetian painting. The flesh asserts itself, sublime and perfect, but palpable and real. It seems neither incongruous nor inconsistent that this courtesan who prided herself on her sexual prowess could also interpret love through the filter of a philosophy of disembodiment: " 'l verace amore principalmente consiste nell'unione dell'animo e della volontà della persona amata, e . . . l'obligo dell'amor finto non merita corrispondenza d'amor vero" (Lettere, #XIV). The worldly salons of the Cinquecento did not overly emphasize the distinctions dividing the two Venuses: the passage from the union of souls to that of bodies was brief.

The Platonic model greatly influenced sixteenth-century prose, giving birth to an extraordinarily popular genre: the trattato d'amore. Initially conceived as serious works, such as Leone Ebreo's I dialoghi d'amore, Pietro Bembo's Asolani, or Mario Equicola's De Natura de Amore, the treatises developed into a curious blend of Stil Novo, Petrarchism, diluted philosophy, and worldly sophi-stication, set in a refined courtly atmosphere or in elegant salons. In these dialogued discussions, the onesta was often at center stage, in her role as the priestess of Venus and, thereby, an expert on love. Tullia D'Aragona appears as a principal in both her own dialogue, Della infinità d'amore (1547) and in Sperone Speroni's Dialogo d'amore. Author Giuseppe Betussi chose friend and courtesan Franceschina Baffo as a major interlocutor in two tracts: the Dialogo amoroso and Il Raverta. These last four trattati take place in fashionable Venetian ridotti; the courtesans appear as cultivated and witty interlocutors, valid representatives of their worldly urban circles. These treatises offer sparkling conversations centering on familiar philosophical and pseudo-philosophical topics: the transitory nature of love, the transformation of lover and beloved, the place of jealousy, the classes of beauty, love by election or by predestination, the necessity of responding to true love, and so on. These works offer no innovative reworkings of philosophical points but manage to popularize and simplify Neoplatonism for a wide reading public more interested in entertainment or a smattering of knowledge than in metaphysical depths: in these tracts, thought is often secondary to banter, flirtation, encomium, and cultivated ostentation. The trattati are also a revealing representation of the onesta's coterie, where she reigns supreme dispensing "incredibile piacere, ineffabile dolcezza ed incomparabile contentezza" (D'Aragona Della infinità 188), the traditional gifts of both God and Venus, albeit on different planes. Sperone Speroni validates the "platonization" of honest prosti-tution by citing Broccardo's oration in praise of courtesans in his own Dialogo d'amore : "egli pruova, in che modo li costumi cortigianeschi (se quelli ben istimiamo) sono via e scala alla cognitione di Dio: che così, come la Cortigiana per diverse cagioni, ama molti, e diversi." Speroni's interlocutor goes on to suggest that the profession of love was so valuable and meritorious "che se Lucretia resuscitasse, e l'udisse, ella non menerebbe altra vita" (Speroni 21-22). Although the chaste Lucretia would never have enrolled in the army of prostitutes, the concept is self-evident: the courtesan is not a whore but a superior woman, thanks to her association with the neoplatonic absolutes Beauty, Good, and Truth.

In the universe of Neoplatonic emanations, everything is doubled: two worlds, two loves, two beauties, and two Venuses. A logical assumption would link any courtesan to the lesser material forms that only vaguely mirror the spiritual. But, in a century aspiring to perfection, the cortigiana is elevated to a higher level in the chain of being, her charms are lightly compared to the perfect beauty that joins with the spiritual good: she is both the proponent of the theory of love and a living symbol of its human realization. In Della infinità d'amore, Tullia D'Aragona is both author and main interlocutor. In control of her own text, she exploits it, painting a woman of great learning and intelligence, possessed of humor and social graces, given to witty conversations and deep thought. It is the ideal Tullia in contemporary dress: a more real portrait than the mythological Thalia depicted by Muzio, but equally idealized to suit modern taste. Within the text, the interlocutor is openly compared to two major female protagonists of the dialogue tradition: Plato's Diotima and Leone Ebreo's Sophia. By reading D'Aragona's text analogically, it is easy to see how the qualities of the literary heroines are transferred to the courtesan protagonist. Like the celebrated Greek hetaera who taught Socrates the mysteries of love, Tullia the protagonist is of classical stature, friend and teacher of great men, mistress of wisdom, and priestess of the sacred rites. Like Leone Ebreo's Sophia (wisdom), she is cul-tured, wise, loved, and superior to the male. Assimilating the virtues and qualities of these ideal models, Tullia the specialist of profane love debates the doctrines of "honest" love, as does Sophia the virgin in the Dialoghi d'amore; by doing so, she becomes the messenger of a spiritual life. Through her own text, Tullia D'Aragona enters the realm of the celestial Venus, cleansed of all earthliness. In case the reader does not perceive such purification and ascension, the author D'Aragona underscores them by quoting the praises and compliments of the subject Tullia's admirers. Generous in their panegyric, the cortigiana, her beauty, and knowledge of love are spiritualized in the homogeneity of the Petrarchan idiom and the Platonic themes.

D'Aragona employs a similar strategy of transformation through association in the Rime (1547) by alternating the sonnets composed by her admirers and her own, a strategy which serves to illuminate her as a literary and human subject from varying perspectives. In prose and verse, the homogenous language of Petrarchism and Platonism merges with the spiritualized contents to construct a Tullia who is all beauty, love, rectitude, and goodness. She is called upon to direct her lover(s) upward, climbing the ladder to God. Bentivoglio declares that "ogni basso pensier spento in noi giacque" at her sight, so that "un dolce foco, e un bel disio celeste" is born in her lovers (#45).[7] An older Girolamo Muzio declares that the"beati ardori del celeste splendore e del mortale" in Tullia "ne l'alme accende mille eterni amori" (#19) while Simone della Volta elevates her to the status of a Platonic emanation from the Christian heaven: "Chi vuol vivo vedere in terra amore,/ divin, pien di virtù, miri quest'una,/ vera amica de gli angioli e di Dio" (#60). Tullia D'Aragona, courtesan, has been replaced by a living ideal.

Through the intelligent use of metaphors and images, the platonic cortigiana onesta projects a positive and felicitous self-image, harmonizing the physical self and the incorporeal soul in an equilibrium impossible to achieve in daily life. In her metahistorical dress, she is the sign of the concreteness of the flesh but also of its eclipse in a mythic universe. As nymph, priestess, sibyl, sage, deity, or platonist, the honest and honored courtesan of sixteenth-century Italy sheds her mortality, freeing herself from the encumbrances and banalities of life. Remade in the image of the goddess of love, she is pure, sacred, and intact for eternity. She is a profane Venus clothed in worldliness, but aspiring to a sacredness art could provide. In ink and oils, the Renaissance courtesan managed to achieve apotheosis and transcend reality: an icon, more than woman.

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___. Le Rime di Tullia D'Aragona, Cortigiana del Sec. XVI. Ed. Enrico Celani. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, l969. Rpt. of l891 original.

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___. Terze Rime. Ed. Gilberto Beccari. Lanciano: Carabba, l912.

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Henriques, Fernando. "The Century of the Courtesan." Prostitution in Europe and the Americas. New York: Citadel Press, l965.

Lawner, Lynne. Lives of the Courtesans: Portraits of the Renaissance. New York: Rizzoli, l987.

Pecchiai, Pio. Donne del Rinascimento in Roma: Imperia. Padova: CEDAM, l958.

Scrivano, Rocco. "La poetessa Veronica Franco." Cultura e letteratura del Cinquecento. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, l966.

Speroni, Sperone. I Dialoghi di Messer Sperone Speroni. Venezia: Aldus [Manuzio], l542.

Venier, Maffio. Il libro chiuso di Maffio Venier (La tenzone con Veronica Franco). Ed. Manlio Dazzi. Venezia: Neri Pozza, l956.

[1]From Thomas Coryat's Crudities, as cited in Henriques (77-82). Another English voyager, Thomas Nashe, described similar adventures in The Unfortunate Traveller.

[2]The poem is attributed to either Biagio Pallai or Gian Francesco Vitale, both minor humanists. In Pecchiai (51-52).

[3]Cited by Biagi (658). Many biographical documents concerning D'Aragona are included in this long article.

[4] Franco, Terze Rime, capitolo XXII. Poems taken from this volume will be cited by number. For additional bibliographical information on courtesans, see Bassanese. Several new studies have appeared on Franco, notably Diberti Leigh and Adler. For further examples and information concerning portraits of courtesans see Lawner.

[5]The unknown male poet is generally thought to be the patrician Marco Venier. Some early printings of the Terze Rime contain Venier's name as the author of the first capitolo. Seven capitoli are addressed to Franco and attri-buted to a male poet.

[6]Venier (37). Maffio was Marco Venier's cousin and composed several dialect poems defaming Franco.

[7] All poetry by Tullia D'Aragona and addressed to her is published in Le Rime di Tullia Di Aragona. Cortigiana del sec. XVI., ed. Celani. Poems taken from this text will be cited by number.