544 guido ruggiero
arbiters of gentlemanly ways and status.3 our young lombard found then
that his own fat purse gained him entrance to her circle of admirers, but
unfortunately that was about all. for as Bandello notes disapprovingly,
“she... seeing him richly dressed and looking like a man ready to spend
realized that he was a pigeon ready for plucking; thus, she began to play
him, making eyes at him and giving him many sweet looks.”4 remarking
that if his young compatriot had stuck with sensible lombard prostitutes
rather than going off to Venice for his sexual adventures, he would have
satisfied his desires without problems, Bandello spins out the tale of this
young wayfarer’s weeks of ever more dispirited waiting, wooing, and shell-
ing out his wealth to a Venetian courtesan.
in the end, with his purse empty and little to show for it beyond a
kiss or two, the youth, depressed and dishonored, decided to make the
ultimate gesture to demonstrate his heroic love, his true honor, and her
cruel ways. he returned one last time to her luxurious residence and there
before her and her other suitors threatened to commit suicide by drink-
ing poison unless she accepted his suit. haughtily Venetian to the last,
from Bandello’s perspective, she turned the young man down flat, and
he downed his poisonous drink. But from a renaissance perspective, the
worst was yet to come; for his poison did not act immediately, and thus
even it denied him his planned dramatic, ennobling death before his cruel
non-mistress. for, seeing him apparently unharmed, she, “thinking it a
3 it appears that the most prominent courtesans had one or a small group of high-
status lovers who kept them; their support allowed them to live richly and be quite
selective in the other clients they choose. for this and a more extended discussion of the
tale, see ruggiero, Binding Passions, pp. 38–40; see also the general overview provided
by Il gioco dell’amore: Le cortigiane di Venezia dal Trecento al Settecento (Milan, 1990),
especially Giovanni scarabello, “le ‘signore’ della repubblica,” pp. 11–35. a more anecdotal
and traditional vision of Venetian courtesans can be found in antonio Barzaghi, Donne o
cortigiane? La prostituzione a Venezia documenti di costume dal XVI al XVIII secolo (Verona,
1980) and rita casagrande di Villaviera, Le Cortigiane venetiane nel Cinquecento (Milan,
1968). for a similar vision of rome, see Tessa storey, “courtesan culture: Manhood,
honour and sociability,” in sara f. Matthews-Grieco, ed., Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy
(surrey, 2009), pp. 247–73. But see also the numerous studies of apparently more humble
courtesans in rome by elizabeth s. cohen and Thomas V. cohen, for example their Love
and Death in Renaissance Italy (chicago, 2004), and Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome:
Trails before the Papal Magistrates (Toronto, 1993), and the works cited there; and for a
similar perspective in florence, see Maria serena Mazzi, Prostituzione e lenoni nella Firenze
del Quattrocento (Milan, 1991). see also the classic by Paul larivaille, La vie quotidienne des
courtesans en Italie au temps de la renaissance (Paris, 1975). an excellent overview of the
courtesan’s arts from a broad comparative perspective is offered in Martha fledman and
Bonnie Gordon, eds., The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross Cultural Perspectives (new york, 2006).
4 ruggiero, Binding Passions, p. 39.