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Veronica Franco was born to a family in the Cittadino class. [1] She developed her position in Renaissance Venetian society as a cortigiana onesta (Honest Courtesan), who were intellectual sex workers who derived their position in society from refinement and cultural prowess.
One type of courtesan was known (in Italy) as the cortigiana onesta, or the honest courtesan, who was cast as an intellectual. Another was the cortigiana di lume, a lower class of courtesan. The former was the sort most often romanticized and treated more-or-less equal to women of the nobility.
The Venetian courtesan has long captured the imagination as a female symbol of sexual license, elegance, beauty and unruliness. What then to make of the cortigiana onesta - the honest courtesan who recast virtue as intellectual integrity and offered wit and refinement in return for patronage and a place in public life?
In Italian Renaissance society existed the category of a cortigiana onesta (Honest Courtesan), who were intellectual sex workers who derived their position in society from refinement and cultural prowess. They served in contrast to other sex workers such as cortigiana di lume or meretrice ('harlots'), who were lower-class prostitutes. [1]
Isabella de Luna (died 1564) was an Italian (originally Spanish) courtesan of Renaissance-era Rome.She was known as amusing company, [1] having a kind heart but also a foul tongue. [2]
She is known in literary history for the 33 letters she sent to Strozzi between 1516 and 1517. Her letters, together with those of Veronica Franco, are among the few and most important non-poetic writings that have come down to us from a courtesan of the Italian Renaissance. [7] “
La cortigiana is a brilliant parody of Castiglione's Il Cortegiano, and features the adventures of a Sienese gentleman, Messer Maco, who travels to Rome to become a cardinal. He would also like to win himself a mistress, but when he falls in love with a girl he sees in a window, he realizes that only as a courtier would he be able to win her.
The Kaufmann Head in the Musée du Louvre, a Roman copy of the Aphrodite of Knidos, which Phryne is said to have modelled for.. Phryne (Ancient Greek: Φρύνη, [a] before 370 – after 316 BC) was an ancient Greek hetaira (courtesan).