Medieval Venice
Medieval Venice in the 16th century was a locus of trade, textile design, wealth, and social stratification. Women of the upper classes living in Venice differentiated themselves from both the working women and each other by employing a number of styling conventions. The maiden, or “donzella,” wore a veil that covered her face. Married women, or “sposas,” wore low cut garments that emphasized their bust. Widows, or “vidovas,” wore cloaked garments that covered their heads. Venetian Courtesans, as they did not belong to any of these societal roles, were consequently not required to use their dress to convey their marital status or age. They chose from the available styles and “played with the visual demarcations”[1] set up within the society in order to dress how they pleased. “Venetian Courtesans were not transgressors of dress codes [engaging in the mimicry of other social roles] but fashion trendsetters who played artfully with the visual boundaries separating women into distinct groups.”[2]
While the decision to flout societal norms for dress may seem trivial, this action allowed for the courtesan, or Cortigana to take control of her own body and public representation and simultaneously engage in collective action with other courtesans. As Margaret Rosenthal puts it, “…clothing was a useful but highly deceptive tool for social differentiation.”[1a] As every other woman’s style was already predetermined for her, courtesans carved out a place for themselves in society by dressing exactly as they pleased. “…Courtesans were relatively free to pick and choose from the clothing available to them and cobble together personal identities.”[2a] While one could identify a married woman by one item of clothing, the courtesan was identifiable through her subversion of normative codes; through her unrecognizability and inability to be categorized. “Courtesans selected clothing from many different groups of women both as a tool for collective identification and to create highly individualized styles.”[3a]
The courtesan utilized clothing in order to both display her economic prowess and simultaneously create the notion of “fashion” itself. The courtesan was the sole member of Venetian society who turned her clothing into a display of individualism and advertise her success. She dressed herself “with unusual color choices and decorative trims, while adhering to the traditional sartorial limits, thus revealing a mastery over her own body…. An entrepreneur of the self, the courtesan knew well how to advance in the social echelons of Venetian life by adapting to the vagaries of custom.”[4a] In carving out her own place within dressing and society, she “exposed the very notion of fashion as it was newly defined in the sixteenth century, fashion as endless change, pretense, performative counterfeit, and social subversion.”[5a]
The courtesan’s fashion choices did not exist within a vacuum, and were among the many exports of the trade-hub of Venice. In the sixteenth century, many traders, military officers, and noblemen kept Alba Amicorum, or “albums of friends.”[1b] These albums were illustrated books full of memorabilia from their travels that often included drawings of the fashions from various locales. Most frequently, the women that would pose for these drawings in Venice were the well-dressed courtesans. These illustrated albums would transmit the fashions of far-flung places to other countries. Upon the owner of the album’s return, he would show his peers the illustrations, and the dressmakers and women there would replicate the garments from the Alba Amicorum. In this sense, sometimes unbeknownst to those influenced by them, the Venetian courtesan was amongst the first fashion trendsetters in history. The body of the prostitute is here seen as a site of cross-cultural investigation and influence.
Footnotes
[1] Rosenthal, Margaret F. "Cutting a Good Figure." The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-cultural Perspectives. By Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. 52. Print. p. 57
[2] Rosenthal, 52
[1a] Rosenthal, 53
[2a] Rosenthal 57
[3a] Rosenthal, 52
[4a] Rosenthal, 52
[5a] Rosenthal, 52
[1b] Rosenthal, 53