In the Company of the Courtesan (37 page)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The Venice of this novel is deeply rooted in research. While its main characters, Fiammetta Bianchini and Bucino Teodoldi, are born of my imagination, the city (like Rome before the sack) was famous for her courtesans, and a few such women were known to have kept dwarves, along with parrots, dogs, and other “exotics.”

Some of the other players in the novel are real. The painter Tiziano Vecellio (Titian as he is better known) and the writer Pietro Aretino both lived in Venice at this time, as did the architect Jacopo Sansovino, who was responsible for many of the city's most beautiful High Renaissance buildings, though his most famous commissions were just beginning during the years in which this book is set.

During his long and stellar career, Titian painted a number of nudes, in particular a portrait of woman lying on a bed with a small sleeping dog and two maids in the background. The setting of the work was a room in his own house, and the canvas seems to have been in his studio in the mid-1530s. It ended up in Urbino in 1538, purchased by the duchy of Urbino's heir apparent of the time. Hence its present title,
The Venus of Urbino.
While art historians differ on the meaning of the painting, it seems likely that the model Titian used was a Venetian courtesan. The work hangs now in the Uffizi gallery in Florence.

Pietro Aretino is less well known outside his native land. He was nicknamed the Scourge of Princes, and his letters and satires earned him as many enemies as friends. He was known for his relationships with courtesans and was remarkable in that he penned both religious works and pornography, in particular “The Illustrious Sonnets,” written in support of his friends Giulio Romano and Marcantonio Raimondi to complement their series of sixteen drawing-engravings known as
The Posti
or
The Modi,
which caused a huge scandal in Roman society in the mid-1520s. There is no extant copy of the original engravings, though a few fragments are held in the British Museum. Aretino's verses were republished alongside more crude woodblock copies of the originals, and from the mid–sixteenth century onward they were (and are still) highly sought after by collectors of erotic memorabilia. Two of the sixteen drawings and the accompanying sonnets, however, have been lost entirely. Aretino later went on to write
The Ragionamenti,
another largely pornographic tract including a section on the training of a courtesan, published in the 1530s. A few years after his death in 1556, the Counter-Reformation produced the Index of Prohibited Books. Aretino's work was high on the list.

With regard to the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, it is known that one Asher Meshullam, the son of a leader of the Jewish community, converted to Christianity in the mid-1530s. Because I could discover very little about him, I chose to give my convert a different name, and no doubt a different experience.

Which brings me to La Draga…A woman called Elena Crusichi, more popularly known as La Draga, is actually mentioned in court records of the time. She had a reputation as a healer and was partially disabled, with failing eyesight. I was entranced by the fragments of her story that are available and also by her name, but I have taken considerable fictional liberties with her character and her fate, for the real La Draga appears to have survived into old age, despite brushes with the authorities. Venice, in fact, behaved better than many states when it came to accusations of witchcraft, and there are no existing records of public burnings. However, criminals who embarrassed the state with either their crimes or the timing of them, were known to be dispatched more quietly at night by drowning in the Orfano Canal.

Also in the spirit of confession, I should add that, while a Register of Courtesans (a somewhat satirical tract with comments about the prowess and charges of such women) did indeed exist in Venice, I have predated its existence by a few years.

This is the extent of my conscious manipulation of history. Other mistakes, for which I apologize here, are due to the fact that extensive research and a deep love of the period cannot, alas, turn a fiction writer into a historian.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could not have written this novel without the inspirational support of many people.

For his scholarship and his invigorating conversation, I am greatly indebted to the Renaissance historian Lauro Martines. Also to my former art teacher Berenice Goodwin, and to Sheila Hale, Titian's latest biographer: each contributed her sharp eye and love of Venice, which saved me from many of my own mistakes. Tom Shakespeare helped me create Bucino as a living, breathing character. Gillian Slovo, Eileen Quinn, Michael Cristofer, and Janessa Laskin all proved to be stalwart companions on my journey. In Venice, Estela Welldon offered me the most perfect place to write, and in London, the staff of the British Library and the Warburg Institute made my research as painless as it could be.

I am indebted to everyone at Little, Brown, U.K., and Random House, U.S., for their powerful encouragement and support, and most especially to my agent, Clare Alexander, and longtime editor and friend Lennie Goodings.

Special mention must go to my teenage daughters, Zoe and Georgia, who endured endless spontaneous lessons on Venetian history, Renaissance Catholicism, and the sexual politics of the time with remarkable good humor and only the occasional hint of exasperation. And who, as the going got rough, devotedly fed their mother dinner when—because of the excitement of the story—she forgot to feed them.

But most of all, my love and gratitude go to Tez Bentley, who accompanied me intellectually on this rich, sometimes intimidating journey into the past, and whose acuity, sensitivity, and vision helped me to be more ambitious than I would otherwise have dared.

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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S
ARAH
D
UNANT
is the author of the international bestseller
The Birth of Venus,
which has received major acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Her earlier novels include three Hannah Wolfe crime novels, as well as
Snow Storms in a Hot Climate, Transgressions,
and
Mapping the Edge,
all three of which are available as Random House Trade Paperbacks. She has two daughters and lives in London and Florence.

ALSO BY SARAH DUNANT

The Birth of Venus

Mapping the Edge

Transgressions

Under My Skin

Fatlands

Birth Marks

Snowstorms in a Hot Climate

This is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Sarah Dunant

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Published in Great Britain by Little, Brown, an imprint of the Time Warner Book Group U.K.

Endpaper credit: Grande Pianta Prospettica—Venice, c. 1500 (engraving), Barbari, Jacopo de' (1440/50-1515)/Museo Correr, Venice, Italy;/Bridgeman Art Library

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eISBN: 978-1-58836-550-7

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