Cutting a Good Figure: The Fashions of Venetian Courtesans in the Illustrated Albums of Early Modern Travelers

Abstract In this essay I argue that Venetian courtesans were not transgressors of dress codes but fashion trendsetters who played artfully with the visual boundaries separating women into distinct groups. My principal evidence consists of three unpublished miniature albums in manuscript dating from the 1570s to the 1590s that display courtesans and other women in various states of dress. Rather than mere mimicry of the styles of Venetian noblewomen by courtesans, these manuscripts show that courtesans selected clothing from many different groups of women both as a tool for collective identification and to create highly individualized styles. They also show that certain courtesans not only negotiated social freedoms as writers and musicians but managed as a collective to attract to the lagoon republic foreign visitors who hoped to witness them in action during annual festivals. Visitors often purchased visual representations of courtesans’ dress in the Venetian marketplace and then placed them, together with colored miniatures of other Venetian fashions of both men and women, in personal albums as memories of their visit.