1. Veronica Franco: The Life of a Courtesan in Renaissance Venice and Her Influence on the Analysis of Female Portraiture

2. Thesis Many famous artists depicted the lives and beauty of the courtesans including Carpaccio, Giacomo Franco, Titian, Giorgione, Bordone, and Parrhasio. However, because of what we know about Franco’s life, it is possible that scholars are merely assuming that the unknown sitters in the works of the above artists are courtesans. I will discuss what it is that was written about Franco and why that has led scholars to label most of the Venetian female portraiture as depicting courtesans.

3. Two venetian ladiesBy: carpaccio

4. bibliographies • Junkerman, Anne Christine. Bellissima Donna: An Interdisciplinary Study of Venetian Sensuous Half-Length Images of the Early Sixteenth Century. Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services, 1988 • Lawner, Lynne. Lives of the Courtesans: Portraits of the Renaissance. New York: Rizzoli International Publications Inc., 1987. • Rogers, Mary. “Sonnets on female portraits from Renaissance North Italy.” Word and Image 2, no. 4 (October- November 1986): 291-305. • Romano, Dennis. "Gender and the Urban Geography of Renaissance Venice.” Journal of Social History 23, no. 2 (Winter 1989): 339-348. http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=187e6a7f-f94f-448d-b8d8-baeb110f471e (accessed October 2, 2011). • Rosenthal, Margaret F. The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth- Century Venice. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992