The Venetians: A New History: from Marco Polo to Casanova (35 page)

When Laura was thirty-nine, Donna Cipriana introduced her to a nineteen-year-old young man whom she came to call Zuanne Cocco. As she confessed, ‘I fell in love with him, and I induced him to fall in love with me.’ She even paid Donna Cipriana to bring her magic potions, so that she could cast a spell on Zuanne, inducing him to make love with her. But Zuanne remained cautious: having sex with a nun could result in the death penalty. So Laura hatched a desperate and daring plan. Together with a fellow nun she called Sister Zaccaria, she began digging a wall in a storeroom that backed onto the canal, using a piece of iron pulled from the grille on her cell window. For more than a month Laura and Sister Zaccaria continued digging away at the stone wall – which proved to be six stones deep – before finally they made a hole through it that overlooked the waters of the canal. They disguised the hole on the canal side by pushing a large stone into place and blocking the gaps at the edge of the stone with terracotta. The hole in the storeroom wall they apparently covered with black and white lime.

Laura’s determination evidently overcame Zuanne’s reluctance. He set out one night, accompanied by his cousin (who was intended as Sister Zaccaria’s reward for her part in the plot), and together the two of them made their way by boat along the canal, put a plank across from the boat to the hole and clambered into the convent. According to Laura, ‘they stayed with us for two or three hours, while they had intercourse with us’. After this first visit, Zuanne returned alone and concealed himself in the
storeroom for some ten to twelve days. During this time Laura brought him food, but also diligently made a point of being seen by the other nuns in the communal places within the convent, ‘and then when everyone was asleep, I went alone to be with him’.

Yet despite all Laura’s precautions, news of her secret trysts somehow leaked out and was passed on to the authorities, who set about putting her on trial, threatening her with torture if she did not reveal every detail of her dalliance. The preceding quotations from Laura are all taken from her eventual trial, at which she was forced to reveal the true identity of the young men she had called Zuanne Cocco and his cousin Zorzi. These were Andrea Foscarini and Alvise Zorzi, both scions of distinguished noble families (each of which would boast a doge). However, as soon as Andrea and Alvise had got wind of Laura’s coming trial they had fled. In their absence they would be sentenced to twenty years’ exile from the city and all the territories of Venice, with the stipulation that if ever they set foot in the Republic during their exile they would be sentenced to death. In the course of the trial it came out that Laura and Sister Zaccaria had been assisted in their plot by a servant woman called Antonia and her husband Zulian, who worked as a carpenter at the Arsenale. They had acted as go-betweens, and Zulian had used his boat to collect Andrea Foscarini and Zorzi. For their comparatively minor part in the plot, Antonia and Zulian were given extremely harsh sentences, presumably to deter others who might be tempted to accept payment for such services. Zulian was condemned to serve eight years as a galley slave in the Republic’s navy – with the proviso that if he was physically unable to complete this term he would receive eight years in gaol and have his right hand cut off. His wife was sentenced to be publicly flogged through the streets the quarter-mile from San Marco to the Rialto – an ordeal that would certainly have inflicted on her seriously debilitating injuries and incurred such disgrace as to have rendered her a social outcast (as indicated in the further proviso that if henceforth she ventured again into a convent or convent church, she would have her nose and ears cut off).

This trial, which took place in 1614, caused a great scandal, along with widespread gossip, made all the more piquant by the fact that the convent of San Zaccaria was known to contain daughters of the most noble families.
The precise fate of Laura and Sister Zaccaria remains unknown. As they were both nuns they could not have been sentenced by the secular court, and would have been placed in the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. According to records in the Vatican, the Patriarch sent to Rome a plea for their absolution, almost certainly at the instigation of the powerful Querini family, so it seems that they may well have escaped further punishment. Yet the final word should perhaps be left with the Cambridge historian Mary Laven, whose
Virgins of Venice
includes this and many other examples of life in Venetian convents: ‘For these two women, a life sentence within the walls of San Zaccaria was probably punishment enough.’

The nearest that Venetian women came to any degree of self-fulfilment and independence was perhaps in the life of the courtesan, though this way of life was beset by its own risks. The courtesan occupied an ambiguous niche in society. The ‘honest’ courtesan was certainly far from being a common prostitute, despite the fact that she expected to be paid for her sexual favours. She was frequently a figure of some repute, attracting artistically talented and intellectual young men (and some not so young) to the social gatherings she hosted. Here conversation was often witty, intelligent or poetic – fulfilling a genuine need, for these aspects of social life were not usually found at home amidst the domesticity of family life, in the corridors of power at the Doge’s Palace or amidst the businessmen who gathered at the Rialto. Courtesans were often ‘sponsored’ by rich and powerful figures, but usually came to rely upon the generosity of their several admirers. As such, jealousies were frequent; and this certainly contributed to the risk of the courtesan’s life. Without a powerful figure lurking in the background, one false move could easily bring about her downfall and ruin. And even with such protection, the prospect of ruin was ever-present – in the form of fading looks, pregnancy or sexual diseases, most notably syphilis. This hideous disease had spread throughout Italy during the last decade of the fifteenth century, and from then on was a constant threat to sexual libertines of both sexes. Where prostitutes were concerned, syphilis was taken as an occupational hazard, for both the women and their clients. Painful and quackish ‘cures’ abounded – with treatments ranging from poisonous mercury to harmless (and useless) ‘charms’ such as garlic. Prostitutes would continue working until disfigurement and other
hideous ailments rendered this impossible. With courtesans, the effect was more genteel, but equally vicious. A hint of this disease, in whispered gossip or a jealous satirical poem, and a courtesan’s clientele of admirers could vanish overnight. Few patrons were of sufficient compassion to support a courtesan when her health and charms had gone. And yet the finest of the courtesans were figures of genuine distinction.

Amongst these was Veronica Franco, who was born in Venice in 1546. Her family belonged to the merchant class, though her mother before her had been an ‘honest’ courtesan, and coached her in the skills, charms and intellectual accomplishments that were required if she wished to establish herself as a courtesan, or gain a good marriage. Initially, Veronica succeeded in the latter sphere, and in her teenage years was married to a prosperous physician called Paolo Panizza. But this did not last, and they were soon separated. Around this time, Veronica gave birth to the first of her three surviving children, though she later insisted that Paolo was not the father. By the age of nineteen she had established herself as a courtesan, her name appearing alongside that of her mother in
Il Catalogo di tutte le principal et più honorate cortigiane di Venizia
(The Catalogue of All the Main and Less Honoured Courtesans of Venice), which was published in 1565. This listed the names, along with an indication of the addresses and fees charged by known courtesans in the city. Veronica is listed as living in the Santa Maria Formosa district, charging ‘2 scudi’ and with ‘her mother as go-between.’
*
Il Catalogo
would have been for under-the-counter circulation in certain bookshops, being purchased by locals and acting as a guide for visiting tourists. The first general guidebook to the city,
Venetia, città nobilissima
, would be published sixteen years later in 1581

Within nine years Veronica Franco would be the most celebrated courtesan in the city. There is a portrait of her, almost certainly by Tintoretto, which depicts someone of striking rather than traditionally beautiful features, with the gaze of a self-possessed woman of some character and
seriousness. It is not difficult to imagine her as the talented poet and letter-writer that she was by now becoming, to such an extent that she was a welcome guest at the literary salon presided over by Domenico Venier,
*
and was soon exchanging love-poems with his young relative, the poet Marco Venier.

In 1574 the French king Henry III made a celebrated visit to Venice, when the city went out of its way to impress upon the twenty-three-year-old monarch its worthiness as an ally in the dangerous power game now being played out in Europe between France, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Not only was Henry shown the most advanced technology of the Republic (the galley miraculously constructed in the Arsenale in the time it took him to dine) and its cultural achievements (having his portrait painted by Tintoretto), but he was also encouraged to sample the delights for which the city had now achieved renown throughout Europe. One evening, his royal finery disguised beneath a cloak, he managed to slip out of a side-door to a waiting gondola. Here he was taken on a journey through the canals, probably by the poet Marco Venier, and secretly delivered to the house of Veronica Franco. Here, in the words of Veronica, he arrived ‘like Jupiter descending from heaven to my humble roof. Afterwards she would write him a letter and two sonnets, expressing her ‘immense desire’ for him. When he left, Henry had taken with him a small coloured enamel portrait of her, which she had given him ‘in exchange for the lively image that you have bequeathed to the centre of my heart’. Veronica would never forget this royal visit – as an overwhelming personal experience, as well as for the ultimate social honour it bestowed upon her.

The following year she would publish the first of her two books of poems,
Terze Rima
. This consists of twenty-five poems, though only seventeen of them are hers. Others are by Marco Venier and another, unnamed, male author. Veronica’s own poems give all manner of insights into her life and her understanding of herself as a woman. She explicitly challenges the time-honoured idealised woman so beloved of Dante and Petrarch. Instead, she proclaims her sexual expertise, claiming that it is enough to satisfy any man’s
desires. At the same time she also gives glimpses into her daily life and preoccupations, which appear to have been similar to those of many bourgeois Venetian women of the period: she sits for her portrait, plays the lute, prepares for a dinner party with her friends, and so forth. These poems contain numerous classical allusions, especially to the works of Ovid and Catullus, echoing many of their joys and agonies in the game of love.

But we also have a glimpse of the more difficult side of Veronica’s life. At the literary salon in the Ca’ Venier she made an enemy of Marco’s cousin Maffio Venier, an overambitious ne’er-do-well who lived beyond his means and was dissatisfied with the minor diplomatic postings that he only achieved through his family name (and he may well have increased his income by passing on state secrets as a spy). Jealous of her talents and the adoration accorded her at the Ca’ Venier salon, Maffio wrote a number of satirical poems about her in the Venetian dialect, and circulated them amongst fellow poets. In them he lashes out at everything his jealous mind can concoct about Veronica – her perceived social-climbing, her inflated reputation as a poet and an intellectual, but above all her perceived beauty. Indeed, there is more than a suggestion that she may have turned down his impecunious sexual advances. He lambasts her (‘an infamous bastard born beneath the stairs’), claiming that she puts on airs and calls herself
principessa
(princess), while holding a
corte
(court), which is in reality no more than
una stalla
(a stable). In another poem he descends to grotesque exaggeration and lies, hinting that she might have syphilis:

Your head is a sea of pustules,

Your face all covered in wrinkles,

And your eyes bulge and roll

As if exorcising your soul.

Your tits hang so low

That you can use them to row

When you’re fucking about on a boat.

In one of her poems in
Terza Rima
, Veronica defends herself with dignity, rebutting Maffio’s profanities by pointing out what they reveal about their author. By descending to such diatribes, he simply drags himself down
into the mud. In other poems she takes it upon herself to defend all defenceless courtesans against such hatred, castigating those men who insist upon placing women on pedestals, attempting to transform them into some idealised virginal beauty – only to tear them down again when they do not live up to this impossible state, blaming them for all the decadence which they saw as corrupting Venetian society.

In the very year that
Terza Rima
was published, Venice would be struck by the plague. By now Veronica Franco was living in a sizeable house in some comfort, supporting her three surviving illegitimate children, as well as her family and servants. But as panic swept through the city, and all who could fled for the mainland, she too decided to leave – taking only such valuables as she could carry, so that she could support herself and her family until they returned. However, word of her flight quickly spread, and her house was soon broken into, with looters making off with all her remaining treasures. Two years later she would return, all but penniless.

The thirty-one-year-old Veronica would set about re-establishing herself, with the support of the ageing Domenico Venier. In 1580 she published her second book,
Letteri familiari a diversi
(Informal Letters to Various People), which would contain her letter to Henry III amongst others, and the two sonnets that she had addressed to him. But despite this attempt to raise her social standing, her jealous enemies were now beginning to gang up on her. Later in the same year she was hauled before the Venetian Inquisition on a charge of witchcraft or, more specifically, performing ‘magical incantations’. (In the popular imagination, courtesans were frequently seen as casting a spell over their rich lovers.) These charges were eventually dropped, almost certainly due to the behind-the-scenes influence of Domenico Venier; but the social stigma remained. Just two years later Domenico Venier died, leaving the fading Veronica devoid of protection or financial support. The woman who just eight years previously had been deemed fit for a king was now reduced to poverty and disgrace. She would spend her last years all but forgotten, living in the slum district where many destitute courtesans and former prostitutes took refuge during their final years. In 1591 she died, aged just forty-five.