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Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was an Italian poet and courtesan in 16th-century Venice. She was particularly famed for her beauty and wit, as well as two surviving publications of original writings: Terze Rime, a collection of poems, and Lettere familiari a diversi, an epistolary anthology.

Early Life and Family
Veronica Franco was born into a family of cittadini originari, natural-born Venetian citizens who, while unable to participate in Venetian politics, often held bureaucratic positions in the state’s government. She was the only daughter of Francesco Franco and Paola Fracassa, who herself had been a courtesan and who later served as an intermediary between her daughter and her daughter’s clientele. Franco’s relationship with her three brothers-Girolamo, Orazio, and Serafino-is largely unknown, but evidence from Franco’s various wills suggests that they maintained a close relationship. Rare for girls at the time, Franco had access to her brothers' tutors and thus began her lifelong pursuit of knowledge at a young age.

Franco had six children, three of whom survived infancy. She became pregnant with her first child in 1564, when she was eighteen years of age. It was also around this time that she separated from her husband, a doctor called Paolo Panizza, who was father to none of her children. The names of two of her surviving children and their respective fathers are known: Achiletto, fathered by Giacomo di Baballi of Ragusa, and Enea, daughter of Venetian patrician Andrea Tron. With no husband, Franco was the sole earner in her fairly large and affluent household.

Career
Franco's principal income derived from her services as a cortegiana honesta: an 'honored courtesan' who engaged in sexual relations with wealthy and powerful men for a high fee. Her rise as such a courtesan occurred at a time when the Venetian government increasingly tried to counteract the increasingly blurred socioeconomic lines that the profession created. As a major center of the sex trade in Europe, Venice had no shortage of courtesans. A testament to her wit and intellectual prowess, Franco became perhaps the most famous woman in Venice in such a competitive market.

Shortly after her separation from Panizza, Franco is listed in the 1565 Catalogo de tutte le principal et più honorate cortigiane di Venetia as being one of the most preeminent courtesans in all of Venice. The catalogue was a directory of the most notable and respectable courtesans in Venice, listing their addresses and fees, as well as their intermediaries; in Franco's case, it was her mother.

In the 1570s, in line with the distinguished reputation a courtesan was meant to have, Franco developed her skills as a poet by integrating herself into the circle of Domenico Venier, a powerful member of a Venetian patrician family and former senator. It was at such ridotti ("salons") that Franco furthered her reputation and expanded her social network, integrating herself into the cultured upper classes and firmly distinguishing herself from the cortigiane di lume and meretrici who depended solely on their body for income.

An association with Ca' Venier, as Domenico's palace was called, proved quite beneficial to Franco, who in 1575 was editor to ''Rime di diversi eccellentissimi autori nella morte dell'Illustre Sign. Estor Marteninengo Conte di Malapaga'', a volume of poetry representing much of the male Venetian elite.

Her association was the so-called Ca' Venier was not without its drawbacks. Maffio Venier, a celebrated poet in the vernacular and nephew to Domenico, waged a particularly explicit poetry campaign against her, seeking to diminish Franco's reputation as both a skilled poet and a distinguished courtesan. In a particularly violent poem against her entitled Veronica, ver unica puttana ("Veronica, a truly unique whore"), Maffio describes her as suffering from advanced stages of syphilis and spreading the disease throughout the city, so much so that hospitals send her gift baskets in appreciation of the increased business. Rosenthal discusses that Maffio's vitriol largely stemmed from an increasing fear among the patrician class that the Venetian social hierarchy--historically rather rigid, perhaps best exemplified in the Serrata del Maggior Consiglio--was dissolving, thereby initiating social unrest and decay. Maffio's denunciatory poems provided much of the impetus for Franco's writing of Terze rime, published in 1575.

In 1577, while away from Venice to escape a particularly deadly outbreak of the plague, Franco wrote to the Venetian council and proposed the foundation of a woman's home for those women ineligible to participate in the other state-run institutions because they had been married or had already had children.

Franco's next and final publication came in 1580 with Lettere familiari a diversi ("Familiar Letters to Various People").

Accusations of Witchcraft and Financial Troubles
Accusations of witchcraft against Franco occurred in an environment of instability in Venice following the particularly deadly Plague Years of 1575-77. In 1580, Franco submitted a report to the authorities, the Lords of the Night, detailing various valuable items stolen from her during her time away from the city. These charges yielded no results, and, upon an additional instance of theft in May 1580, Franco turned her suspicions to members of her household, which included one Redolfo Vannitelli, a tutor to her children. Possibly fearing that he would be named as a suspect in the theft, Vannitelli accused Franco of witchcraft, a serious but rather common charge during this period.

Vannitelli levied this charge—among a host of other, largely heretical accusations—against Franco with fiery rhetoric, claiming that his employer was not a cortegiana honesta, but rather a puttana pubblica (public whore ). Brought before the Venetian Inquisition, Franco expertly defended herself. Rosenthal maintains that Franco’s successful defense rests in large part to her poetic wit as so exemplified in Terze Rime, though during the hearings Franco notably employs Venetian dialect to craft her defense, a linguistic register she avoided in her poetic works. It is thought, too, that Franco’s connections to notable Venetians such as Domenico Venier and various patricians aided in the end of her trials.

Later Life and Death
Little is known of Franco's later life. Already facing financial hardship before the trial, Franco suffered greater hardship from the downturn in her reputation that her trial brought about. Tex records from 1582 indicate that Franco was living in the neighborhood of San Samuele, largely inhabited by the poorest of the city's prostitutes. She died on 22 July 1591 from a fever, likely impoverished.

Writings
In general, Franco's work is thought by scholars such as Rosenthal and XXX to fall into a proto-feminist tradition. In her poetry, she defended herself from male critics and wrote in support of women in her same position, a historically insecure demographic.

In 1575, Franco's first volume of poetry was published, Terze rime, containing 18 capitoli (verse epistles) by her and seven by men writing in her praise. The first fourteen poems alternate between those written by Franco and those written by other unknown men, one of whom has been identified as Marco Venier, nephew to Domenico and brother to Maffio. As the courtesan's lover, Marco's relationship with Franco may have also had a part to play in Maffio's poetry campaign against her. "When we too are armed and trained, we can convince men that we have hands, feet, and a heart like yours; and although we may be delicate and soft, some men who are delicate are also strong; and others, coarse and harsh, are cowards. Women have not yet realized this, for if they should decide to do so, they would be able to fight you until death; and to prove that I speak the truth, amongst so many women, I will be the first to act, setting an example for them to follow."

— Veronica Franco, Capitolo XVI, A Challenge To A Poet Who Has Defamed Her The embodiment of her role in the public realm was made evermore tangible, amongst the literary circles and the Venetian public during her polemic literary battle with Maffio. The poem referenced above is believed to have been one several directed toward him, the others being Capitoli XIII and XXIII.

In 1580, Franco published her Lettere familiari a diversi which included 50 letters, as well as two sonnets addressed to King Henry III of France, who had visited her six years earlier. These letters cover a range of topics, including Franco's domestic life and her literary endeavors. The Veronica Franco Project asserts that these letters are a carefully curated collection that allowed Franco to project a favorable image of herself and that the genre of the work allows her to project authenticity and self-assuredness. Franco notably infuses her identity as a woman throughout her letters, making references to her motherhood and displaying her solidarity with fellow women.

Franco's success was not limited to being a coveted courtesan, it was her wittiness and often criticized voice that was immortalized by way of being published that has brought forth much recognition. Records indicate that the amount of actual publications were limited as they were thought to have been at her own expense, or private publications. Her work is known to have been included in an anthology of women poets in the eighteenth century (1726) edited by Luisa Bergalli.

Posthumous Reception and Cultural Depictions
In 2013, her work was interpreted as adopting “a position of public authority that calls attention to her education, her rhetorical skill, and the solidarity she feels with women." Her publications have allowed her work and proto-feminist efforts to transcend time, though it is important to note that Franco only began to experience a sustained resurgence in notability in the twentieth century.

Franco's life was recorded in the 1992 book The Honest Courtesan, by American academic Margaret F. Rosenthal. The book provides a detailed account of Franco's biography and career, as well as the social environment that allowed for Franco's success.

Catherine McCormack portrayed Veronica Franco in the 1998 movie Dangerous Beauty, released as A Destiny of Her Own in some countries, based on Rosenthal's book.

In the 2000s Franco prompted scholarly inquiries on “what it meant to be a public woman in Cinquecento Venice”. This directly pertained to her duality of both a courtesan and a published poet. Franco is referenced to have been a “living performance of public art—a renowned courtesan whose body was available to a certain exclusive clientele, a published author, and a public presence.” Franco's literary work demonstrates her ability to defend womankind, as a whole, in a format that can be studied and understood as being ahead of her time. Franco's work embarked on juxtaposed realms such as sexuality and women's agency as a whole. In doing so, she challenged and disrupted the patriarchal norms that ruled her time. Franco is also portrayed in the 2012 Serbian novel named after her (Serbian: Штампар и Вероника) authored by Serbian writer Katarina Brajović.

Franco is one of the principal characters in Io sono Venezia, a 2020 RAI special on the history of the former Republic.

Franco also has a street named after her in the Italian city of Padua.