I’ve been talking about the inspiration for Masks, the Mircea Basarab novel set in 15th century Venice, for the last week. And lately, the discussion has turned to some of the places where you could spend your money in the city (if, unlike Mircea, you actually had any). But there was one obvious place to lighten your purse that we haven’t discussed: the Venice brothel. And since Masks was partly set in one, that’s an oversight that needs correcting.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, “Courtesan and Old Man”, c. 1530
Fifteenth century Venice probably had more prostitutes per capita than any other city in Europe, an estimated 11,000 for a population of around 150,000. That’s right, approximately one in every 13 people was in the trade. And while it is true that vast numbers of tourists padded out the population during carnival, and that Venice was a bustling port city with thousands of sailors visiting every year, it’s also true that those 11,000 were the recognized prostitutes. Many more were unlicensed streetwalkers who couldn’t be counted because they weren’t in a brothel, and women who worked at the job part time when money was tight.
So, seriously, what was going on in Venice?
Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, better known as Salaì, was a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci from 1490 to 1518. He was rumored to be Leonardo’s lover and was the model for many of his paintings.
Part of the reason for the huge number of prostitutes in Venice was active government support of the practice. Yes, that’s right–not only was it legal, it was encouraged. Not so much because the government liked prostitutes (at least not officially) but because they disliked someone else more.
The growth of Venetian prostitution was in direct proportion to the growth of homophobia among the city’s leaders. In 1448, a special police force was created specifically to combat the practice of sodomy, with sentences that included beheading and public burning. A similar law in 1496 listed the reasons for this, including the belief that homosexuals “worked against the propagation of the race” and were “displeasing to the Creator.”
A Renaissance era bathhouse, where people were busily engaging in “proper” illicit sex–between men and women.
Both of these attitudes had their origin in the bubonic plague, which first arrived in Europe in the 14th century and continued to reoccur periodically for many more. Prior to the plague, homosexuality, especially in young men, had been viewed as merely part of their sexual evolution. The thought was that they’d eventually get over experimenting and settle down. But, of course, some did not, and when the population plummeted due to the plague, government officials started to worry about the results of having a large, non-propagating group in society.
But there was an even bigger worry. Churchmen like Bernardo of Siena warned of God’s judgment if the practice wasn’t stamped out, to the point of engendering a wave of homophobic hysteria across northern Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Venetian leaders realized that, as a port, they were particularly susceptible to the plague, and were desperate to propitiate the Almighty by luring men back to the straight and narrow.
Their solution? License more whorehouses, of course. You kind of have to love the irony there.
Bernardino Licinio, “Young Lady and her Suitor”, Venice 1490-1550.
The crackdown on homosexuality was good news for Venice’s busy community of female prostitutes, who had already defeated the government’s attempts to control them. In 1360, the government had tried to restrict them to an area around the Rialto market, called the Castelleto. In 1420, they tried to force them to wear yellow scarves to ensure that they weren’t mistaken for “proper” women. They also tried to force them to return to the Castelleto early in the evening, so they wouldn’t be secretly plying their trade elsewhere, and to restrict how much they drank in the city’s taverns.
But to the government’s dismay (and apparent surprise, as hard as that is to believe), the prostitutes of Venice did not turn out to be an exceedingly law abiding bunch. Unlike in most cities of the age, Venice’s brothels were run by women, and independent-minded ones at that. They tended to ignore or evade laws they didn’t like, and brothels soon spread far beyond the Castelleto, invading even some of the local nunneries.
Lucas Cranach, 15th c.,
“Peasant and Prostitute”
But heavy fines and imprisonment of up to two years were the result of being caught dallying with a nun. It was enough to keep many men’s attention focused elsewhere. Namely on one of the three main types of prostitutes in Renaissance Venice: the puttana, the meretrice pubblica and the cortigiana.
The puttana were mainly streetwalkers or workers in taverns, bathhouses and unlicensed brothels. They were the lowest form of prostitute and the one most disliked by tax collectors, whom they often successfully dodged. The tax men preferred the second kind, the meretrice pubblica, or public prostitutes. They made up the majority of sex workers in the Serene Republic and plied their trade in licensed brothels. The taxes they paid funded a large percentage of the public works in Venice for over two centuries. But it was the third type of prostitute that Masks was concerned with, the type that would make Venice famous–the courtesans.
c1570, Michiel Parrhasio Courtesan Playing Lute
The name courtesan comes from the word courtier, and that is what these women were expected to be: gracious, accomplished, and beautiful. They fulfilled a role something like that of the geishas of Japan, able to play music, sing, dance, play cards, make entertaining dinner table conversation, and, essentially, be intelligent and witty companions. Unlike the usual practice with the geishas, however, sex was definitely expected as well, with a guide book being published in the 16th century, Catalogo de tutte le principal et più honorate cortigiane di Venetia, giving names, addresses, and fees for Venice’s foremost courtesans.
The fees were high. Many of these ladies supported themselves in style, with the cortigiana onesta, the upper tier of Venice’s courtesans, living in houses not noticeably different from those of the nobility. They often acted like them, too, holding dinner parties for visiting dignitaries from across Europe. But even the lower tier, the cortigiana di luma, lived in comfortable inns near the Rialto, and were considered a cut above the meretrices.
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538. The model for the painting was Angela del Moro, a highly paid Venetian courtesan and a companion of Titian’s.
By the 16th and 17th centuries, tales of the beauty and refinement of Venice’s courtesans had spread across Europe, resulting in the influx of a new type of visitor to the city: the sex tourist. That was partly due to the publication of Thomas Coryat’s travel book, Coryat’s Crudities. He slept his way from Britain to Venice and back again, and wrote about his adventures on his return. The book was licentious enough that it started the practice of the “Grand Tour”, a lengthy trip following university for young men of means, who told their parents that they wanted to see the great sights of Europe.
They weren’t lying; they just didn’t mention exactly what those sights were.
Veronica Franco, Portrait by Tintoretto, ca. 1575.
I based Auria’s bedroom off of one Coryat described. But for Auria herself, I turned to the most famous Venetian courtesan of them all, Veronica Franco. She was among the cortigiana onesta, and possibly the most sought after and accomplished in Venice. She wrote poetry and entertained visiting kings, among them Henry III of France, to whom she dedicated some of her verses.
1522, Lucas Cranach, “Amorous Old Woman and Young Man”
Of course, there was one additional type of prostitute in Venice that we’ve yet to mention: the men.
Many of the city’s male prostitutes served the male population, as evidenced by the story of their outrage at a 15th century ordinance. It required the meretrices to bare their breasts while soliciting at open windows and at some of the city’s bridges (the Bridge of Tits acquired its name for a reason), in order to encourage young men to visit the tax paying official brothels. The male counterparts to the meretrices decided that this gave the ladies an unfair advantage, which they countered by standing in their windows, wearing nothing but masks! Since anything done masked was considered play, they couldn’t be prosecuted–at least not until more laws were passed.
However, there were also many male prostitutes in Venice that catered to the ladies, as shown by the above painting. In later centuries, they would be known as cicisbeo, a type of male courtesan sanctioned by the married men of Venice to keep their much younger wives busy while they visited their mistresses. It was a common-sense solution to arranged marriages, which had often been done more for money than out of any real affection. It also kept the girls from running off and finding lovers who would be far less discreet.