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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
Date:April 26, 2007_
I, ___Catherine L. Yellig___________________________________,
hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of:
Masters
in:
Art History
It is entitled :
Rethinking the Renaissance Courtesan:
Contemporary Interpretation of Three Paintings
by Titian (Tiziano Vecellio 1485 – 1576)
This work and its defense approved by:
Chair: ____Dr.^ Kristi^ Nelson__________
____Dr. Diane Mankin___________
____Dr. Kim Paice______________
_______________________________
_______________________________
Rethinking the Renaissance Courtesan: Contemporary Interpretation of Three Paintingsby Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, c. 1485-1576 )
A thesis submitted to The Art History Faculty of the School of Art / College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning University of Cincinnati In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Art History
Catherine Lynne Yellig 2007
Thesis Committee Chair: Kristi Nelson, Ph. D. Reader: Diane Mainkin, Ph. D. Reader: Kim Paice, Ph. D.
Acknowledgements The last few years have passed so quickly that it is hard to believe that it has been nearly three years since my journey at the University of Cincinnati began. Throughout my time at UC there have been a number of people who have made an impression on my education and I would like to thank them here. I would like to extend a most sincere thanks to Dr. Kristi Nelson for advising me on this topic and working with me throughout the process of writing. I am also most greatful to Dr. Diane Mankin, whom I graciously thank for mentoring me throughout the duration of my time as a student. Certainly outside the realm of school, there are a number of people to whom I am indebted as well. I would like to thank Jeni Eckman, Megan Emery, and Bree Lehmann for reading and correcting my papers. I would also like to thank my mother, Cheryl Ashworth, for taking my daily phone calls and listening to me read my papers. And lastly, but certainly not least, I would like to thank the man who has stood by my side since we were in the eighth grade together, Brad Minton. Thank you for all your generous help and comforting support for the last few years.
List of Illustrations Figure
- Titian, Venus of Urbino , 1538
- Titian, Venus with a Mirror , 1553
- Titian, Danaë , 1546
- Marcantonio Raimondi, Position #7 , 1524
- Titian, Self-Portrait , c.1550-
- Raphael, Pope Leo X , 1518
- Titian, Portrait of Charles V , 1533
- Titian, Phillip II ,
- Tintoretto, Jacopo Sansovino , 1560/
- Titian, Pietro Aretino , 1545
- Tintoretto, Veronica Franco , 16th^ century
- Giorgione, Sleeping Venus , 1501
- Titian, Flora , 1515/
- Jacopo Palma the Elder, Flora
- Titian, Venus with a Mirror , 1555 (detail 1)
- Titian, Venus with a Mirror , 1555 (detail 2)
- Titian, Venus with a Mirror , 1555 (detail 3)
- Titian, Venus with a Mirror , 1555 (detail 4)
- Titian, Venus with a Mirror , 1555 (detail 5)
- Titian, Woman with a Mirror , 1512/
- Follower of Titian, Allegory of Vanity (Possibly Alfonso D’Este and Laura Dianti) , date unknown
- List of Illustrations………………………………………………………………………….
- Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………
- Chapter One -- The Courtesan and Titian: An “Honest” Affair…………………..………
- Chapter Two -- Una donna ignuda : An Interpretation of Titian’s Venus of Urbino...........
- Venus with a Mirror …………………………………………………….. Chapter Three – Reflecting Ambiguity: A Brief Conversation on Titian’s
- Chapter Four – The Onesta and Danaë: A Rendezvous of Ideological Currents…………
- Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………...
- Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………
- Illustrations…………………………………………………………………………..........
- Titian, Danaë ,
- Titian, Danaë,
- Jan Gossaert, Danaë ,
- Tintoretto, Danaë ,
- Hendrick Goltzius, Danaë ,
“How could a psychoanalyst of today not realize that his realm of truth is in fact the word, when his whole experience must find in the word alone its instrument, its framework, its material, and even the static of its uncertainties?”^1 Lacan suggested that language (the word) structures the consciousness and unconsciousness of the subject and theorized that subjects are defined by their entrance into language. The psychoanalytic experience he suggested is actually determined by the subject’s ability to interpret the signs and signifiers of language. In Lacan’s theory on the formation of identity, there are three developmental stages that define the subject’s entrance into the social order. They are the pre-linguistic, the mirror-stage, and the linguistic (symbolic) phase. This study suggests that each step corresponds to a visual representation of a female nude in three of Titian’s paintings. Each stage also becomes a basis for a chapter of my thesis. Imposing this model, I explore the possibility of whether this argument can be born out; to suggest to what extent these paintings can be seen within the work of Titian and within the broader history of onesta paintings. I relate Lacan’s theorizing of the modern subject to the historical moment in which our notion of the modern subject came to be. I chose Titian’s work for many reasons. The beauty and sensuality of his paintings made him highly sought after as an artist, both within Venice and throughout Europe. His style focused on the subjective beauty of colorito (color) as opposed to the rigidity of disegno (design) found in works by his contemporaries such as Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564). Titian’s connection to the Scourge of Princes, Pietro Aretino, is also a reason. Aretino wrote on the courtesan extensively and was a notorious peddler of smut who maintained an influential position in Titian’s life throughout the whole of his career. Aretino wrote La Cortigiana and other comedies such as, Il Raggionamento dello Zoppino which satirize the profession of the (^1) Jacques Lacan, “The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious,” in Yale University Studies , No. 36/37 (1996),
- Lacan was a psychoanalyst and lifelong follower of Sigmund Freud, and based his theory of the developmentof the subject on a profound understanding of the subject’s relationship to language.
courtesan and give a rage glimpse into the lives of these women by claiming their own historicity.^2 Some of the stories that he places in the narrative include situations that were typical of the trappings of the courtesan profession, including mothers who procured their daughters to ensure their economic futures, and women scorned as their bodies succumb to the dreaded syphilis. One of Aretino’s most infamous works was a collection of sonnets (Sonetti Lussuriosi) that accompanied the scandalous woodcuts of Marcantonio Raimondi (1480-1527), called i modi (the positions). The women depicted in the sixteen notorious prints were famous courtesans from Rome [Fig. 4].^3 The woodcuts were based on a number of paintings by the artist Giulio Romano (1499-1546) who painted the frescoes for Cardinal Bibbiena of the Vatican.^4 Around 1525, when the collection of woodcuts and sonnets made their way to the public it sent a shockwave through the city of Rome. Raimondi was thrown into prison, Romano’s career was destroyed, and Aretino fled to Venice.^5 The sack of Rome in 1527 by the Protestants and Spanish, led to the death of the Golden Age of courtesanry, as the effects of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation drove many parties (especially those involved in carnal commerce) to relocate to a more favorable environment, the Republic of Venice. Overview of Chapters Chapter one discusses the onesta model in relation to Titian and the cultural milieu of sixteenth-century Venice. The goal is to provide a social history of the subject by defining the cortigiana onesta and examining the ideological structures governing the socio-political landscape_._
(^23) Samuel Putnam, The Works of Aretino, 22. 4 Lawner,Ibid., 88.^ Lives of the Courtesans, 40. (^5) Putnam, The Works of Aretino, 23.
onesta type create compliant and structured individuals who were easily marketed to foreign dignitaries, noblemen, royalty, and clergy. Survey of Literature Many historians have provided a history of the Renaissance courtesan. Lynne Lawner’s The Lives of the Courtesans (1987) and Georgina Masson’s Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance (1975) provide the social history of the courtesan in Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. To recognize the various iconographic details and pictorial motifs associated with courtesan imagery, this study draws from Lawner’s suggestion that their common attributes include: elegant hair typically dyed blonde, jewelry including armilla, rings, and necklaces; a boudoir setting; a schiratto or fur wrap, and the exposed décolleté. Not all of these details are found in the paintings I will discuss, however, various combinations are found in each image. Feminist critique of Renaissance history began with Joan Kelley-Gadol’s “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” (1977) her work is similar to Linda Nochlin’s in that it stems from asking the same type of institutional social question.^6 Kelley-Gadol addresses how the rise of the state’s power diminished feudal relations and deprived women of the independent position that they had gained during the Middle Ages. The encouragement of chastity and the institution of marriage exerted even more pressure on women whereby one entered, “a relation of almost universal dependence upon her family and her husband.”^7 After discussing how women were increasingly confined to the home and domestic affairs, the author ultimately concludes that women did not enjoy a Renaissance.
(^6) Linda Nochlin was the first to question “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Her article was the first to address the absence of women from traditional Western history. The essay can be found in Power and Other Essays (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988) 147-158. Women, Art and (^7) Joan Kelley-Gadol, Did Women Have a Renaissance? In The Book of the Courtier: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Daniel Javitch (London: WW Norton and Company, 2002), 350.
I agree with Kelly-Gadol’s contentions; however, the beginning of her article explicitly states that her study addresses the women of the urban Italian elite. But what about the marginalized women who were not of noble birth or were not properly wed? It seems to me that to group all women together and to evaluate them by the standards of the urban Italian elite overshadows and downplays the position of an entire class of people, specifically those of lesser or common birth. In many instances, this is the class from which courtesans emerged. The economic and social conditions of the sixteenth century were such that prostitution offered a way to navigate the boundaries of society, albeit through the commodification of the body. Some of the major monographs on Titian include: The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, 1460-1590 by Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters (1990), Titian’s Women by Rona Goffen (1997), and Titian and His Drawings: with Reference to Giorgione and Some Close Contemporaries (1987) and The Paintings of Titian, Complete Edition (1969) both by Harold E. Wethey. All of the aforementioned texts provide information about Titian, his oeuvre, and the economic and social conditions of sixteenth-century Venice. Another compilation, Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1997) by Rona Goffen includes a number of essays about the subject of this painting, each revealing a different interpretation of the ambiguous subject matter. This painting reflects scopophilic tendencies that developed in direct concert with the discourse of perspective as it came to fruition during the Early Modern period. This is supported by the writings of Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form (1927), Lynne Hunt The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity 1500 – 1800 (1990), and Hubert Damisch’s The Origin of Perspective (1994). Two essential articles for chapter four are: Eric Jan Sluijter’s “Emulating sensual beauty: representations of Danaë from Gossaert to Rembrandt” (1999) and Cathy Santore’s “Danaë: The
Chapter One Titian and the Courtesan: An “Honest” Affair This chapter addresses a number of trends relative to artistic, philosophical, and socio- political movements that occurred in Italy during the sixteenth century. Understanding the social history of sixteenth-century Venice is important because it establishes the connection between the cortigiana onesta and Titian and his milieu, all of which provides insight to an understanding of these paintings. Renaissance Venice was a center of wealth and a bastion for the ideals of stability and justice. Writers like Bernardo Giustiniani (1408-1489) and Gasparo Contarini (1483-1583) wrote about the republican institutions of Venice and suggested they were stable points in a world subject to constant political change.^8 Liberal economic policy allowed the industries of glass manufacturing, silk making, printing, and prostitution to generate enormous wealth through trade with the Levant and Eastern Europe. Existing sumptuary laws show that regulated prostitution was a means to micromanage the material existence of courtesans, therefore generating revenue for the state.^9 The marketing and merchandising of the female body was a lucrative endeavor that attracted foreign businessmen, dignitaries, clergymen, and members of the nobility. Titian was born in 1486 in the outer regions of the Republic in Pieve di Cadore and became one of the most famous painters of Venice during the sixteenth-century [Fig. 5]. The paintings in his oeuvre suggest his mastery of color and the human form and include landscapes, religious and mythological scenes, history paintings, and portraits. Early in his life he was apprenticed to Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516), but as Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) states, “He
(^8) James Bruce Ross, “The Emergence of Gasparo Contarini: A Bibliographical Essay” in Church History , Vol. 41, No. 1 (Mar., 1972), 24-26. (^9) Lynne Lawner, Lives of the Courtesans: Portraits of the Renaissance (New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, 1987), 18.
abandoned the manner of Bellini and attached himself to that of Giorgio Barbarelli (Giorgione, 1477-1510) whose style he emulated well into the 1530s.”^10 Titian’s fame and artistic recognition can be understood by looking at the list of his wealthy and prominent patrons. At the age of twenty, Titian was invited to Rome by Cardinal Bembo, Secretary to Pope Leo X [Fig. 6]. Titian delayed the visit so long that both the Pope and Raphael died before he had the chance to go.^11 Upon the death of Bellini, Titian assumed the position of court painter at Ferrara in 1516. From that point forward the artist conquered the courts of northern Italy and then Europe as a whole. He began painting for the court of Mantua in 1523. In 1530, Titian was introduced to Charles V [Fig. 7] who, in 1533, appointed the artist to court painter and honored him with the rank of Count Palatine and Knight of the Golden Spur. Although he was not formally educated, he was familiar enough with elevated society and achieved unprecedented honor for a painter.^12 During the year 1532, Titian began painting for the dukes of Urbino. Between 1545 and 1546, Michelangelo and Titian resided in Rome under the auspices of the Farnese. During this sojourn, Titian worked on one of his many versions of Danaë when Michelangelo paid a visit. Vasari remembers two things about the encounter: the painting and what Michelangelo said about it. According to Vasari, Michelangelo gave the painting high marks for its use of colorito but criticized it for its lack of disegno and quipped, “It is a shame that good design was not taught in Venice from the beginning.”^13 Between 1548 and 1550, Titian was summoned to Augsburg by Charles V. It was at the Imperial Diet where Titian
(^10) Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. by Gaston du C. de Vere with an introduction by David Ekserdjian (New York, NY: David Campbell Publishers Ltd, 1996), vol. 2, 780-803. (^11) Ibid. , 786. (^12) Ian Chilvers, "Titian," in The Oxford Dictionary of Art Online , [http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t2.e3479], 2004. (^13) Frederika H. Jacobs, “Aretino and Michelangelo, Dolce and Titian: Femmina, Masculo, Grazia” in The Art Bulletin , vol. 82, no. 1 (Mar., 2000), 55.
The term onesta first appeared during the second half of the fifteenth century. It was a term that marked the distinction between an elite group of prostitutes and the common puttane (whores). Reviving the model of the heterae (prostitute from Antiquity) the cortigiana onesta provided more than sexual services to male circles of the papal court; they became the embodiment of a social ideal.^17 O nesta refers not only to an ethical virtue, but to social respectability, standing, and wealth. By emulating the Italian elite, Fiora Bassanese contends that these women, “…resembled no one as much as the ladies of the court; in dress, mannerisms, and social function, entertaining with her conversation, song, poetry, and musical accomplishments.”^18 Literary references both non-fictional and fictional from the sixteenth-century, demonstrate the significance of prostitution. What these sources reveal is that la cortigiana onesta was an invention of society. Art and literature were a means to advertise a woman’s position; however, it was done so at the behest of her male counterparts. In this manner, the onesta was dependent upon artists and writers to propagate her image, to create her and make that creation known.^19 By the third and fourth decades of the sixteenth-century, painters like Titian promoted a new imagined ideal. Lawner contends that, “the sources for this vision can be found in a convergence of ‘high culture’ based on Petrarch, Bernardo Bembo, and Baldassare Castiglione, with Platonic overtones, and Venetian courtesans.”^20
(^17) Fiora A. Bassanese, “Private Lives and Public Lies: Texts by Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance” in Texas Studies in Literature and Language (^18) Ibid. , 30:3 (Fall 1988), 296. (^19) Lawner also wrote “Gaspara Stampa and the Rhetoric of Submission” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh SmythMarcantonio Raimondi, and Jean-Frederic Maximilien de Waldeck.. Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1985. Vol. 1, p 345-62, and “I modi” in the works of Giulio Romano, (^20) Lawner, Lives of the Courtesans, 135.
There are various accounts of the number of prostitutes within Venice. Mario Sanudo’s diary suggests that of Venice’s 300,000 inhabitants, there were 11,654 women of the night.^21 While this number may be overstated, it implies that there were literally thousands of puttane who practiced their profession in Venice. In order to distinguish oneself from the masses, an onesta had to, “dedicate oneself to the creation of an external image of grace and beauty, of cleverness, poise, and elegance, which had to be bolstered by specific abilities in music and in witty conversation.”^22 Another way to ensure business relations was to have one’s name placed into the little black book of Venetian courtesans, the Catalogue of All the Principal and Most Honored Courtesans.^23 This book included a complete list of prostitutes’ names, their procuresses, the place in which they lived, the quarter of the city where each courtesan’s casa (house) was located, and the monetary amount a gentleman was expected to pay for the lady’s favor.^24 The 210 names listed in the book were the crème de la crème of Venetian prostitutes. Listed among them was Veronica Franco, age 20, a unique subject since such a large body of her poems and letters exists today [Fig. 11].^25 In 1575, Franco published her Terze Rime which contained eighteen verse epistles written by her own hand. In 1580 she published her Lettere familiari a diversi, which included approximately 50 letters and two sonnets dedicated to King Henri II of France.^26 As an onesta, Franco lived well and by the 1570s she was included in one of the most prestigious literary circles of Venice, that of Domenico Venier. In the salon, she
(^2122) Bassanese, “Private Lives and Public Lives,” 296. del Cinquecento,” inAdriana Chemello, “Donna di palazzo, moglie, cortigiana: Ruoli e funzioni sociali della donna in alcuni trattati La corte e il “Cortegiano,” vol. 2 (Roma: Bulzoni, 1980) 159. (^23) Included in Antonio Barzaghi, Donne o cortigiane? La prostituzione a Venezia: Documenti de costume dal XVI al XVIII secolo (^24) Georgina Masson, (Verona: Bertani, 1980), 155-67. Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), 153. (^25) Margaret Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice (Chigaco, Il: The University of Chicago Press, 1992). Rosenthal has written the seminal works on Franco’s life andcreates a compelling portrait of the social, economic and cultural conditions of sixteenth-century Venice. (^26) Ibid., 123.
