Even so, the reclamation of eros was fraught with conflict. If on the one hand the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, kept his own courtesan, the famous Vanozza dei Cattaneis (who in turn owned a series of brothels surrounding the Campo di Fiori in Rome), the painter Raphael rejected his mistress and model, La Fornarina, on his deathbed and repented the sin of loving her. In a sense, the courtesan’s profession was born of this ambivalence. Unchaste by definition, she became the unofficial representative of the pagan world. Yet this did not prevent the representatives of Christian morality and civic order from chastising her. Forbidden at times to dress as a lady would dress, she was barred from attending church during particular hours and even kept from some secular events. Still, whether seen as divine or luciferous, the light she cast was not dimmed by this ambivalence. It was almost as if she possessed a powerful source of light within her, a light that emanated not from her beauty alone but also from what she knew.
If brilliance is always colored by the metaphorical evocation of light, light in turn is itself a metaphor for knowledge. To shed light on a subject is not only to see it but to understand. It is divine light that brings revelation, a shining light that guides us through dark times, a brilliant mind that can illuminate dark corners of the universe, the light of reason that orders thought.
Certainly, most courtesans had that indefinable light we see in the eyes of many intelligent people. As a group, they were remarkably accomplished. Mogador was both a successful performer and a novelist. Tullia D’Aragona wrote philosophy. Veronica Franco was a poet, Pompadour a respected patron of the arts, Païva an extraordinary businesswoman, Ninon de Lenclos a famous wit. But a courtesan had to have another kind of intelligence, too: an active awareness of what transpires between one person and another during any given moment. She would then be able to read not only French and Italian (and perhaps English, too) but the movements of hands, the slight blush of a cheek, lines around the eyes, a sigh.
We know, of course, that many other women had and still have this skill. But what once made the courtesan exceptional in this regard was that her brilliance was neither concealed nor limited. Rather, she extended her perceptions freely into realms of which proper ladies were supposed to remain ignorant. Imagine the effect then: A man feels a sudden burst of desire, which goes unspoken as if unseen, a source of embarrassment in his own drawing room. But in the presence of the woman he keeps, he is a book which she reads openly and with satisfaction, the knowing look in her eyes filling him with delight.
More and more, we are understanding how critical the need for reflection is to the human psyche. No experience seems complete unless it is witnessed. To have desire as well as feeling recognized and mirrored is itself a desire. This is perhaps one reason why there are so often mirrors in paintings of courtesans. Of course, the mirror was supposed to stand for vanity. But the haunting luminescence of these images suggests far more than the temptations of a minor vice. In one of Titian’s greatest paintings, the subject, a beautiful woman, has turned away from the mirror. One senses her lover has surprised her at her toilette, though he is not present in the mirror either. What is reflected back is simply a fragment of light, implying vision itself and the capacity for perception. To be seen by another, especially a lover, is literally enlightening.
The power of the experience is evident in another painting by Titian, too, in which he depicts Venus turned toward a mirror but startled, her hand at her breast, not in modesty but touching her heart, as if she were temporarily shaken by her own image. But of course we are all shaken by what she sees in the mirror, which is after all, since she is the goddess of love, the knowledge of sexual passion.
Carnal Knowledge
. . . if Socrates was so wise and virtuous why don’t you make a practice of imitating him? For as you know he discussed everything with his friend Diatoma and learned all manner of wonderful things, especially concerning the mysteries of love.—Tullia D’Aragona, Dialogue on the Infinity of Love
Although it is clear that the courtesan would need to have carnal knowledge, what has not always been so evident is the profound nature of what she knew. The realm of sexual pleasure is also the realm of the psyche. To love or be loved, to touch, be touched, feel pleasure, passion, ecstasy, to surrender and release engages every human faculty, not sensual adroitness alone but intelligence of every kind. As well as being willing to give pleasure, a good lover must be sensitive and aware, registering what kind of touch, for instance, on which part of the body arouses desire, knowing which mood calls for a robust approach, which moment requires gentleness, able to laugh or tease while at the same time probing both the mind and body of the loved one for gateways to greater feeling.
The desire to give pleasure is, however, not the only motive. The deepest ardor of the lover is the desire to know the beloved: to test, feel, see, taste, smell, witness every response, every shade of sensation. In this sense, it is right that Venus as well as courtesans should so often be depicted with mirrors. In recognizing even the subtlest desires of the beloved or in answering these desires with a delicate precision, the lover is providing a mirror for what the beloved feels. The beloved feels known, even ravished, by this intense reflection. And, in turn, the one who is loved feels an echoing need to know, because being a lover as well as the beloved, the desire is to please by knowledge, even know all that can be known at once.
The urge to consume knowledge can be consuming in itself. Though in an afternoon of lovemaking desire may arc and come to fruition, the desire to know is inexhaustible. The wish is for an impossible thoroughness, a complete union between the knower and the known. Yet as Tullia D’Aragona, an Italian courtesan born at the beginning of the sixteenth century, has written, “. . . Because it is not possible for human bodies to be physically merged into one another, the lover can never achieve this longing. ”
Respected as an exceptional woman, in 1547 Aragona was cleared of a charge of breaking the sumptuary laws of Florence where, in the mid-sixteenth century, courtesans were required to wear yellow cloaks. It was because she was a poet that the charges were dismissed. As if to prove that her acquittal was just, her Dialogue on the Infinity of Love was published later that year, though the substance of her philosophy argues that eros makes everyone exceptional. “Lovers,” she says, “entertain both hope and fear. Simultaneously they feel both great heat and excessive cold. They want and reject in equal measure, constantly grasping at things but retaining nothing in their grip. They can see without eyes. They have no ears but can hear. They shout without a tongue. They fly without moving. They are alive while dying.”
Erotic desire and pleasure both have the effect of unshackling (or, from another point of view, unhinging) the mind. Received ideas of reality, prejudices, caution, even the restraints of reason, seem to wither, if not vanish, in the presence of the mysteries of love. That a courtesan such as Tullia D’Aragona, who was well trained by her mother, also once a courtesan herself, used beauty, timing, and many other skills to inspire love was thus used by her enemies as a criticism. Thomas Coryat warned British men who traveled to Italy in the sixteenth century that under the influence of a courtesan, they would be liable to temporary insanity.
Coryat’s warning had little effect. Perhaps this is because, though the desire would not have been entirely conscious, madness of this kind was exactly what certain men wanted. They were seeing not just physical thrills but mental thrills as well, to go underneath conventional wisdom and reverse the established order of their days, an order which, though comfortable, could also be suffocating.
A certain shine in the eyes of a courtesan would offer a reprieve. That her business was the realm of unreason, folly, foible, indulgence, wild desire, delirium, and disorder was apparent in her expression. Yet the same gaze promised that she would be a trustworthy guide. She was not ignorant of convention. Her knowledge of the deeper order of flesh was mixed with a canny comprehension of the social order. She knew how to read both matter and form; she mi
xed the understanding of many complex histories artfully with wantonness; those seductive eyes were educated, her misbehavior cultivated.
In this light, it is not surprising that by the mid-sixteenth century, Venice, a city which made its fortune from sophisticated indulgences, should become renowned for its courtesans. These brilliant women were part of a shining panoply of goods, splendid silks, rich velvets, vibrant gems, sharp and intriguing spices shipped from the East, which together with the translucent beauty of the glass blown on the Venetian island of Murano, and the gold leaf in abundant supply that adorned not only St. Mark’s but so many private palazzos (covering the entire facade of the Cà’ d’Oro, for instance), dazzled the senses. After the visitor gliding in a gondola down the Grand Canal caught sight of the faintly flirtatious image of a palazzo gleaming like buried treasure in the water as he traveled toward St. Mark’s Square, the beauty meeting his eyes would seem to multiply beyond any proportions his mind could hold. The cascade of luxurious sights, smells, and sensations that greeted the senses everywhere was almost overwhelming. Strangers encountering Venice, according to one early English writer, would often be “striken with so great an admiration and amazement, that they woulde, and that with open mouthe, confesse, never any thing which before time they had seene, to be thereunto comparable.”
But to gauge the entire effect of a visit to Venice during the Renaissance, two other essential ingredients should be included. Mixed inextricably with the luxury of the Ducal Palace, the glorious churches, and all the private palazzos belonging to the great families of Venice was the great art being produced then. Extraordinary figures newly rendered in thread, laid in mosaic and tile, or painted as frescoes by Carpaccio, Giorgione, Palma Vecchio, Veronese, Titian, and Tintoretto embellished ceilings and staircases, entryways and the walls of great rooms. No less impressive to most visitors in that period were the illustrious courtesans of Venice, some so splendid that they must have seemed, like the goddess who looked after the city, as if they had just risen from the sea that shone so seductively at every edge.
It has been said more than once that Venice itself was like a courtesan. Whenever anyone came to the city with whom the Venetians wanted to gain favor, they would supply him with every possible luxury. The visit of the French king, Henri III, provided a chance for exceptional largesse. Isolated by an estrangement from Spain, the doges hoped for the friendship of France. Hence, Henri was wooed with the best of everything the city had to offer. He was brought to the city in a ship rowed by four hundred oarsmen and escorted by fourteen galleys. Then, as his ship crossed the lagoon, it was met by a raft on which, using a furnace shaped like a marine monster whose jaws and nostrils belched flame, glassblowers blew objects that they felt would amuse the king. Soon another armada joined his ship, decorated in opulent tapestries, adorned with figures of dolphins and gods of the sea. Entering the city, he passed through an arch designed especially for the occasion by Palladio, which Titian and Veronese had embellished with painted figures. The Cà’ Foscari on the Grand Canal had been prepared lavishly, his bed sheets embroidered in crimson silk. For the banquet held in the Great Council Chamber inside the Doges’ Palace, the sumptuary laws, which ordinarily pressed restraint on the city’s ladies and courtesans, were temporarily suspended, so that the women present wore their most extraordinary jewels and pearls, not only around their necks but in their hair and beaded over their cloaks. The meal, served on silver plates, consisted of twelve hundred items, including a serving of bonbons from which there were three hundred different varieties to choose. After viewing the opera written for his visit, Henri was asked to witness the launching of a galley constructed for his benefit during the time that dinner had been consumed. And all this was followed by several other days of splendid sights and pleasures. He visited the aging Titian, posed for a portrait by Tintoretto. And finally he was presented with a heavy book: the Catalogue of the Chief and Most Renowned Courtesans of Venice, featuring 210 miniature portraits from which he was asked to choose whom he would like to visit. According to those who witnessed the process, he perused the catalogue intently. After some time, he decided on the courtesan who was at that time the most favored in Venice: Veronica Franco.
We know little of what transpired on the night of their meeting, except that the king must have been pleased. He took a miniature of Franco away with him. And he offered to help her with the coming publication of one of her books. In response, as well as dedicating the book to him and writing sonnets about him, she expressed her gratitude in a letter that overflows with praise for the monarch’s “serene splendor.”
She was well familiar with splendor; her own was legendary. Her exceptional intelligence alone must have been dazzling. Not only was she bright but she was also educated, an accomplishment rare among the women of her time, when out of any given hundred women in the city, fewer than ten knew how to read, and of these, less than four had received any public schooling. Franco was born to a family of cittadini originari, a respected, usually professional class of native-born citizens. In such a family, only the sons would have received an education. But as a girl, Veronica had been allowed to attend the lessons given to her three brothers by their private tutors. Why an exception was made in her case is not known. Perhaps her mother, Paola, who, not unusually among cittadini families that experienced financial distress, was a courtesan, believed that her daughter should be properly prepared for this role. Veronica would have no great inheritance to sustain her should the need arise. But if she were to become an honored courtesan instead of a prostitute, she would have to be cultivated.
In hindsight, however, it is easy to see that Franco valued education for other reasons, too. The sheer joy of learning, the love of poetry, the desire to understand, delineate, see beneath the surface were passions which drove her throughout her life. When she reached her sixteenth year, she entered into a marriage that her mother had arranged for her with a doctor named Paolo Panizza. This is virtually all we know about the man, except that since one of several wills she executed over the years requests that her beneficiaries retrieve her dowry from him, we can theorize that he might have been unusually abusive in some way.
Much of what we do know about her life comes either from these wills or from her letters. Elegant, by turns philosophical and decorous, not only do the letters she wrote reveal a shining intelligence but they also make clear how much she took part in the intellectual life of the city. A world closed to most women had opened to Franco when she became a courtesan.
For a short period after her marriage, both mother and daughter were registered with the city. The record shows that they lived together in the parish of Santa Maria Formosa. Neither charged very much for her services. Paola was aging and Veronica was inexperienced. But all that was to change rapidly. Veronica quickly became one of the most sought-
after women in her trade. It was in this role, as companion to scholars, artists, and writers, that she was able to enlarge her education even further. She became a favorite of Domenico Venier, once a protector of Tullia D’ Aragona, and a member of a great Venetian family who supplied more than one doge to Venice. Domenico, who himself had been a senator, encouraged Veronica, read her poetry, and, equally important, included her among his regular guests at the salon which was held in his private palazzo, the Cà’ Venier. It must have been through this circle that she was afforded a brief meeting with the brilliant French essayist Montaigne while he was visiting Venice.
Montaigne knew well that intelligence flourishes from intellectual intercourse. In a famous essay he tells the reader: “To my taste, the most fruitful and most natural exercise of our mind is conversation.” Not only does discussion provide validation, it also supplies a mirror with which ideas can be clarified. Even from disagreement, which Montaigne claimed to value, the mind will be illuminated, as sharper edges are drawn.
And in between accord and discord, there is another space, inhabited by friends and colleagues, a territory filled with sp
arks and resonances, which support and augment any process of creation. As gradually during her mid-twenties Franco became known for her poetry and for the many anthologies that she compiled, she became a valued participant in the literary and artistic world of Venice. From her letters, we know that in this period she was also hosting gatherings of intellectuals and artists in her own home.
Tintoretto was most probably among the artists who attended these gatherings. Some scholars of the period believe that the painter and the courtesan were friends. The thought itself ignites the imagination. Moving back and forth from her poetry to his paintings, one finds an unpredictable but compelling affinity. Besides Franco, Tintoretto painted a few other courtesans. In one of these, the subject is rendered with beautifully soft degrees of brown. The color, steadfast in her eye, blushes in the background, rises toward red on her lips, gathers in a filmy tan in the translucent shawl around her shoulders, shines with a pink luster in the pearls around her neck, glows with creamy whiteness, rounded by chestnut shadows on her breasts, which she exposes. But though Tintoretto had a talent for such portraits, clearly he spent his greatest ardor on religious paintings. Indeed, La Lavande dei Pieti hangs today in San Moise, where Franco worshipped later in her life. Certainly the worlds they inhabited converged in casual ways. But where then would the deeper concordance between a religious painter and this poet courtesan be found?
The answer, of course, is in the shine. In every sense of the word, light is the real subject of Tintoretto’s Paradise, the great fresco where enlightened bodies, free of gravity, rise toward an enveloping incandescence. His painting The Last Supper, in the chancel of San Giorgio Maggiore, presents a drama of light, radiating from the head of Jesus with such a forceful intensity that it appears to have captured all the apostles in its path as it splinters the atmosphere of the room. That the painter was interested in the physical properties of light is undeniable. The subtlety with which he depicts the phenomenon in all its variations is impressive. But for Tintoretto, light is both real and symbolic. He has added a second source of light to the scene, an oil lamp, which, less intense, still burns with a fascinating ferocity of its own, and this light is surrounded by a choir of angels, as if swimming in the element but also made visible and even conjured by it.
The Book of the Courtesans Page 11