354 anne jacobson schutte
years later as Coryats Crudities (London, 1611). At the midpoint of his jour-
ney, he spent about six weeks, from late June to early August, in Venice.
His conclusion to the section on his stay there reveals that he fully sub-
scribed to “the myth of Venice.” Notwithstanding his strong allegiance to
Protestantism, he lauded the Serenissima as “this incomparable city, this
most beautifull Queene, this untainted virgine, this Paradise, this Tempe,
this rich Diademe and most flourishing garland of Christendome.”3
Like all transalpine visitors, Coryate paid particular attention to mat-
ters Venetian that struck him as exotic. These included observations often
quoted by modern scholars. Patrician women—veils on their faces, dressed
in elaborate gowns revealing large portions of breasts and backs—tottered
between their homes and churches on “chapineys” (pianelli), wedged
wooden sandals so high that the wearers had to be supported by atten-
dants on either side.4 On Saturday afternoons, they put chemicals on their
hair and sat in the sun to bleach it.5 When he attended a service in the
Levantine synagogue, he was surprised to discover that most of its pros-
perous male members did not conform to the English stereotype of the
ugly, sour-faced Jew. Many of the women, who sat separately in the upper
gallery, were extraordinarily beautiful and sumptuously attired.6 Venice’s
famous, accomplished, and wealthy courtesans7—one of whom he called
on solely, he was careful to note, in order to gather information—played
a highly visible role in the city.8
Historians less often comment on the attention Coryate paid to other
Venetian men and women. He observed with admiration the doge, sena-
tors, and other patricians in their traditional black robes, and with amaze-
ment the fact that elite male Venetians lived very frugally and did their
own grocery shopping.9 In passing, he mentioned that in Campo Santo
Stefano on Sundays and holidays, boys played a ball game called “baloon”
(balon) before crowds of male spectators, who rented stools if they wished
to observe the contests in comfort.10 When men fought in the streets,
3 Thomas Coryate, Coryats Crudities, 2 vols (Glasgow, 1905), 1:427.
4 Coryate, Coryats Crudities, 1:400; Virginia Cox, “The Single Self: Feminist Thought and
the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly, 48/3 (Autumn, 1995),
554.
5 Coryate, Coryats Crudities, 1:400–01.
6 Coryate, Coryats Crudities, 1:370–73.
7 Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice, pp. 159–87.
8 Coryate, Coryats Crudities, 1:386–87, 401–09.
9 Coryate, Coryats Crudities, 1:388, 396–98, 415.
10 Coryate, Coryats Crudities, 1:385.