Camilla Pisana (probably from Pisa - fl. 1515) [1] was an Italian courtesan, known as a letter writer and poet.
Camilla Pisana became one of four courtesans installed by Filippo Strozzi in a villa near Porta San Gallo in Florence, where they served Strozzi and his friends, including Duke Lorenzo d'Urbino (father of Catherine de' Medici). She lived there with her friends and fellow courtesans Alessandra Fiorentina, Brigida, and Beatrice Ferrarese. [2] Among them Camilla seems, from her letters, to have assumed the role of matriarch of this unusual family. [1] Camilla and her companions could nevertheless enjoy a house decorated by the painter Rosso Fiorentino. [1]
Camilla was renowned for her beauty, musical and literary skills. She wrote letters to her friend Francesco del Nero (1487-1563), [3] who was Filippo Strozzi's brother-in-law and close business associate, complaining about her mistreatment at her lover's hands. [4] [5]
“When this pleasant, though somewhat unconventional, household was dissolved after Strozzi lost interest in it, the girls went on to Rome, where from the rank of cortigiane oneste they soon sank to that of cortigiane piacevoli and even lower.” [6]
She is known in literary history for the 33 letters she sent to Strozzi between 1516 and 1517. Her letters, together with those of Veronica Franco, are among the few and most important non-poetic writings that have come down to us from a courtesan of the Italian Renaissance. [7] “Camilla Pisana's letters seek to persuade their readers of the writer's self-worth by employing the culturally designated language of courtly compliment, suitably phrased.” [8]
According to Alfred Einstein, Camilla provided the words to poems set to music by the famous madrigalists Costanzo Festa and Philippe Verdelot.
Camilla, Filippo's mistress, was able to write poetry in the style of Bembo and Cassola [9] for which we may assume that Verdelot and Festa supplied the music.
It is also possible that this is the same Camilla Pisana mentioned by Aretino in La cortigiana (1534) and in the Ragionamento dello Zoppino. [11] [12]
Courtesan, in modern usage, is a euphemism for a "kept" mistress or prostitute, particularly one with wealthy, powerful, or influential clients. The term historically referred to a courtier, a person who attended the court of a monarch or other powerful person.
Veronica Franco (1546–1591) was an Italian poet and courtesan in 16th-century Venice. She is known for her notable clientele, feminist advocacy, literary contributions, and philanthropy. Her humanist education and cultural contributions influenced the roles of Courtesans in the late Venetian Renaissance.
Angelo Maria Bandini was an Italian author and librarian born in Florence.
Jacques Arcadelt was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in both Italy and France, and principally known as a composer of secular vocal music. Although he also wrote sacred vocal music, he was one of the most famous of the early composers of madrigals; his first book of madrigals, published within a decade of the appearance of the earliest examples of the form, was the most widely printed collection of madrigals of the entire era. In addition to his work as a madrigalist, and distinguishing him from the other prominent early composers of madrigals – Philippe Verdelot and Costanzo Festa – he was equally prolific and adept at composing chansons, particularly late in his career when he lived in Paris.
Costanzo Festa was an Italian composer of the Renaissance. While he is best known for his madrigals, he also wrote sacred vocal music. He was the first native Italian polyphonist of international renown, and with Philippe Verdelot, one of the first to write madrigals, in the infancy of that most popular of all sixteenth-century Italian musical forms.
Pietro Aretino was an Italian author, playwright, poet, satirist and blackmailer, who wielded influence on contemporary art and politics. He was one of the most influential writers of his time and an outspoken critic of the powerful. Owing to his communications and sympathies with religious reformers, he is considered to have been a Nicodemite Protestant.
Lisa del Giocondo was an Italian noblewoman and member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany. Her name was given to the Mona Lisa, her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance.
Giulio Strozzi was a Venetian poet and libretto writer. His libretti were put to music by composers like Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, Francesco Manelli, and Francesco Sacrati. He sometimes used the pseudonym Luigi Zorzisto.
In classical scholarship, the editio princeps of a work is the first printed edition of the work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which could be circulated only after being copied by hand.
Tullia d'Aragona was an Italian poet, author and philosopher. Born in Rome sometime between 1501 and 1505, Tullia traveled throughout Venice, Ferrara, Siena, and Florence before returning to Rome. Throughout her life Tullia was esteemed one of the best female writers, poets, philosophers, and charmers of her time. Influencing many of the most famous male philosophers, Tullia's work raised the status of women to be on an equal footing as men. Her fame and success made her into the most celebrated of Renaissance poet-courtesans. With her intellect, literary abilities and social graces, she entertained powerful men and famous poets.
The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, often simply known as The Lives, is a series of artist biographies written by 16th-century Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari, which is considered "perhaps the most famous, and even today the most-read work of the older literature of art", "some of the Italian Renaissance's most influential writing on art", and "the first important book on art history".
Maistre Jhan was a French composer of the Renaissance, active for most of his career in Ferrara, Italy. An enigmatic figure, of whom little biographical information has yet emerged, he was one of the earliest composers of madrigals as well as a prominent musician at the Este court in the early 16th century.
Bernardo Rucellai, also known as Bernardo di Giovanni Rucellai or as Latin: Bernardus Oricellarius, was a member of the Florentine political and social elite. He was the son of Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai (1403–1481) and father of Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai (1475–1525). He was married to Nannina de' Medici, the elder sister of Lorenzo de' Medici, and was thus uncle to Popes Leo X and Clement VII, who were cousins. Oligarch, banker, ambassador and man of letters, he is today remembered principally for the meetings of the members of the Accademia platonica in the Orti Oricellari, the gardens of his house in Florence, the Palazzo Rucellai, where Niccolò Machiavelli gave readings of his Discorsi.
Giuseppe Ripamonti was an Italian Catholic priest and historian. Ripamonti was a prolific writer, to the extent that he can be considered as the most important Milanese writer of the first half of the seventeenth century, alongside Federico Borromeo.
Cassandra Fedele was an Italian humanist writer. She has been called the most renowned woman scholar in Italy during the last decades of the Quattrocento.
Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai (1403–1481) was a member of a wealthy family of wool merchants in Renaissance Florence, in Tuscany, Italy. He held political posts under Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, but is principally remembered for building Palazzo Rucellai and the Rucellai Sepulchre, for his patronage of the marble façade of the church of Santa Maria Novella, and as author of an important Zibaldone. He was the father of Bernardo Rucellai (1448–1514) and grandfather of Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai (1475–1525).
Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai was an Italian humanist, poet, dramatist and man of letters in Renaissance Florence, in Tuscany, Italy. A member of a wealthy family of wool merchants and one of the richest men in Florence, he was cousin to Pope Leo X and linked by marriage to the powerful Strozzi and de' Medici families. He was born in Florence, and died in Rome. He was the son of Bernardo Rucellai (1448–1514) and grandson of Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai (1403–1481). He is now remembered mostly for his poem Le Api, one of the first poems composed in versi sciolti to achieve widespread acclaim.
Imperia Cognati, was a Roman courtesan. She has been considered the first celebrity of the class of courtesans, which was created in Rome in the late 15th century.
The San Gallo Gate is part of the city walls of Florence and is located in Piazza della Libertà, opposite the Triumphal Arch.
Teresa Carniani Malvezzi de' Medici was an Italian poet, writer, and translator. She was married into the influential Medici family and held the title of countess. She is best remembered for her publications La cacciata del tiranno Gualtieri accaduta in Firenze l'anno 1343 (1827) and In morte di Vincenzo Monti (1829), and her translations of Francesco Petrarch, Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Alexander Pope. She was also known by her pseudonym Luisa Camilla.