ore costly. Many of them received expensive gifts of clothing and jewels from their many admirers. Their extensive spending on lavish dress was considered necessary, for it not only brought them visual attention to individual identity, but also demonstrated their immense possession of wealth (Griffin 98-101). It was still money, along with intellect, that distinguished a courtesan from a common whore.Although becoming an honest courtesan meant gaining the only real freedom a woman could have in Italy, it could also mean putting their life in danger. Life was very treacherous for the women who decided to become a courtesan. They faced attack by jealous lovers, theft from their servants, disease, public humiliation, and destitution. Their greatest detractors were courtiers, who competed with them for the money bestowed by wealthy patrons. The fiercest attackers of the courtesans were Lorenzo and Maffio Venier and Pietro Aretino. They wrote many scathing poems and satirical verses against specific courtesans, sometimes severely damaging that girl’s career. While Pietro shows in his dialogues a certain compassion for his women characters, though, Lorenzo’s and Maffio’s verses are obscene, even revolting (Rosenthal “Honest”). Courtesans also ran the risk of being raped if they angered the wrong man. As revenge, an angry client or lover would kidnap a courtesan and subject her to a trentuno, where she would be raped by thirty-one men, or, even worse, a trentuno reale, by seventy-nine men. If nothing worse, the victim of this became on object of ridicule as a result and her clients and fees dwindled (Masson 25). Rejected lovers were also quite capable of slashing women’s faces for revenge, which would ruin their beauty and their livelihood (Ruggiero “Passions”). In periods of grave social and economic danger, such as when the plague reoccurred, the courtesans were conveniently ava...
