{"id":396,"date":"2011-05-11T10:30:31","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T10:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/?p=396"},"modified":"2011-05-11T10:30:31","modified_gmt":"2011-05-11T10:30:31","slug":"the-courtesans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/2011\/the-courtesans\/","title":{"rendered":"The Courtesans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Women\u2019s Wear Daily \u201cW\u201d magazine Anniversary Issue, July 27-Aug 3 1987<\/em><\/p>\n

The Courtesans<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fearsome Medici may have locked Florence in their iron grip, but they in turn were disarmed by the feverish embraces of the city\u2019s courtesans, a demimonde of redoubtable cultural and political power, according to historian Lynne Lawner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese women\u2019s lives are filled with a swashbuckling quality and a passion that made them alive,\u2019 says Lawner, who spent 15 years in Italy studying them for her Lives of the Courtesans: Portraits of the Renaissance<\/em> (Rizzoli International). \u201cThere was a cult of erotic passion at the time that had been developing for centuries, and the courtesans made themselves custodians of it.\u00a0 There was a very brutal side to Renaissance life\u2014rapes, internecine warfare of the Italian states, civil strife\u2014and I think some of the men\u2019s relationships with women were very crude.\u00a0 But there was this concept of rebirth through beauty and love of knowledge, love of form, of the human body, proportion and symmetry.\u00a0 I believe a great deal of that entered into relationships between men and women, suffused with fantasies of the ideal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Propelling the modern imagination over the distance of such idealized ardor is a task eased by Lawner\u2019s sensuous detail: In her jewel-box setting, the courtesan and her lover lay on silk sheets, the pillowcases \u201cembroidered with gold and silver thread and decorated with pearls and jewels\u2026every empty surface was piled with brocade, velvet, and satin cushions.\u201d A volume of Petrarch as well as other works would be prominently displayed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was above all in the boudoir that the courtesan had the responsibility of exciting the senses and plunging her visitor into an irresistible atmosphere of luxury and sensual pleasure.\u201d Lawner goes in her book: \u201cBeds were inlaid or painted, sometimes with scenes from mythology or romances, and satin canopies billowed over them.\u00a0 The ceiling of the room could be decorated with appropriately lascivious depictions\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The point Lawner makes is that the senses and the intellect fused in a unique, incendiary moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur society doesn\u2019t encourage that kind of synthesis,\u201d says a regretful Lawner, an intellectual siren who admits to having been drawn \u201cnot to the cloistered or ladylike types\u201d but to a more flamboyant, expansive type, women who lived as well as wrote\u201d (as many of them did).\u00a0 \u201cThe emphasis is on production\u2014making things, making money.\u00a0 Here, love is a commodity; then there\u2019s the Mayflower Madam\u2019s managerial side of love.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no romance, idealism, spirituality,\u201d she continues. \u201cWe have to go back and study the history of love.\u00a0 There are many lessons to be learned.\u00a0 It\u2019s a disciplined; it leads to unexpected pleasures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawner, a Fulbright scholar, says she struggled to shimmy down from the ivory tower with her looks, brains and emotions intact. The lure for the academic\u2014\u201cthose of us who love books, love libraries, love archives\u201d\u2014is to burrow, to never come out to see the daylight.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I was vain enough as a woman, interested in love and people,\u201d says Lawner, who claims she does identify to a limited extent with the Renaissance courtesans.\u00a0 One of the most outstanding of Lawner\u2019s subjects is Beatrice of Ferrara, the probable sitter for Raphael\u2019s \u201cFornarina\u201d, mistress of the infamous dissolute Lorenzo de Medici, the subject of an anonymous poem extolling \u201ca neck of snow-white alabaster\u201d and \u201csecret parts\u201d that \u201care even more beautiful,\u201d and reported model for I Modi<\/em>, the uncompromisingly graphic Renaissance sex-manual.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2018t call them feminists in any way,\u201d she says, \u201cbut no one more than they were aware of the pitfalls and extraordinary possibilities of advancing themselves in a world of men.\u00a0 They were among the first modern women to be supporting themselves who had independent spirits.\u00a0 What distinguished the most prominent of the honest courtesans\u2014as opposed to the legions of street prostitutes\u2014is that they chose their lovers.\u00a0 And the lovers had to live up to certain standards, or they\u2019d be dropped<\/p>\n

So they instituted taste,\u201d she continues.\u00a0 They were didactic: there was nothing crude or crass about them.\u00a0 They were dressed in the most lavish materials\u2014they were the showcases for the Venetian republic.\u00a0 And these women were so powerful that they could influence the courts to send noblemen to jail.\u201d<\/p>\n

And just how adroit were they in bed?<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, we have evidence that very delicate complex emotions were felt.\u00a0 From Gaspara Stampa\u2019s poetry,\u201d she continues, \u201creferring to the famed Venetian courtesan, \u201cwe have beauty, and evidence that something in the human heart was felt and expressed.\u00a0 We have ardor\u2026we have burning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women\u2019s Wear Daily \u201cW\u201d magazine Anniversary Issue, July 27-Aug 3 1987 The Courtesans The fearsome Medici may have locked Florence in their iron grip, but they in turn were disarmed by the feverish embraces of the city\u2019s courtesans, a demimonde … >><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lawner.com\/lynne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}