596 margaret l. king
many things” or, as one scholar characterizes them “cultural laborers.”78
independent of courts and patronage mechanisms, these authors wrote
for the market, venturing into the new and risky domains of social criti-
cism and libertinism. at their head was the dazzling Pietro aretino, who
elevated pornographic themes and personal invective into a literary art.79
The libertinism of the poligrafi connected them to the culture of high
profile prostitutes and courtesans and to the private gatherings where the
satirical comedies of il Ruzante (as the Paduan dramatist andrea Beolco
was known) were performed.80 and where the poet Veronica Franco
reigned as an cortigiana onesta, a courtesan whose intellectual skills and
personal charm raised her above the category of prostitute and permit-
ted her to mingle with—though never marry into—the nobility.81 Mostly
hosted by patrician letterati and amateurs, this network of salons, cena-
coli, or ridotti sprang up as sites for the exchange of news, witticisms, and
insights.
More elevated in tone were the academies that arose in Venice and
neighboring Padua, where the cultivated gathered to talk of matters liter-
ary and scientific.^ They had their roots in the circles that gathered around
ermolao Barbaro the Younger, the printer aldo Manuzio, and not far from
the capital at asolo, attended by Pietro Bembo, around the former queen
of cyprus, Venetian noblewoman caterina cornaro. They then prolif-
erated in the later decades of the 16th century; among the many Gino
78 Benzoni, “la cultura: contenuti e forme,” p. 581. For the poligrafi, see Giovanni
aquilecchia, “Pietro aretino e altri poligrafi a Venezia,” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 3
(1980): Dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, part 2, pp. 61–98; Paul F. Grendler,
Critics of the Italian World, 1530–1560: Anton Francesco Doni, Nicolò Franco & Ortensio Lando
(Madison, 1969); and lucia nadin Bassani, Il poligrafo veneto Giuseppe Betussi (Padua, 1992).
79 See Pietro aretino, Dialogues, ed. and trans. raymond rosenthal (Toronto, 2005);
and aretino, The Letters of Pietro Aretino, trans. Thomas caldecot chubb (hamden, conn.,
1967). See also christopher cairns, Pietro Aretino and the Republic of Venice: Researches on
Aretino and His Circle in Venice, 1527–1556 (Florence, 1985).
80 linda l. carroll, Angelo Beolco (Il Ruzante) (Boston, 1990); carroll, “dating ‘the
Woman from ancona’: Venice and ruzante’s Theater after cambrai,” Sixteenth Century
Journal 31.4 (2000), 963–85; Giorgio Padoan, “angelo Beolco, ditto il ruzante,” in Storia
della cultura veneta, vol. 3 (1981): Dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, part 3,
pp. 343–75; and Padoan, “la commedia rinascimentale a Venezia: dall sperimentazione
umanistica alla commedia ‘regolare,’ ” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 3 (1981): Dal primo
Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, part 3, pp. 377–465.
81 For Franco, see Margaret F. rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen
and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice (chicago, 1992); also Veronica Franco, Poems and
Selected Letters, ed. and trans. ann rosalind Jones and Margaret F. rosenthal (chicago,
1998), which includes letters that vividly depict the cultural scene of the 16th-century
Venetian salon; and separately, Veronica Franco, Lettere, ed. Stefano Bianchi (rome, 1998).