Venetian women were excluded from the management of power and from advanced instruction but they participated to other forms of public life. They were important figures in the social, economical and cultural life of the city for the contacts that they held in the familiar relationships, in those with the neighbors and in the common affairs of daily life.
In spite of their limited access to positions of power, women were anyway guaranteed an economic autonomy and already in the medieval times they could decide of real estates, invest their money in maritime partnerships and stipulate contracts. Many were the women who lived alone, not married or widows, and who had to work; a document of the end of the 16th century attests that approximately a third of the tax declarations of the residents was compiled by women. Usually the working life began soon; already at the age of 4 years they went as servants in the private houses or as aids in the manufactures.
Many women were active in webbing or in the wool spinning but could become owners of laboratories or also of valuable glass furnaces on the island of Murano. The noblewomen were mostly dedicated to the religious charities and the attendance, founding and supporting of monasteries.
In 16th century the dowries had become so expensive, that many families, in order to save money, obligated the daughters to enter nunneries. The life in the nunneries depended from the administration of the abbess. In some of them there was a great freedom, in others, on the contrary, a strong discipline.
More famous women, of whom you still speak today, were the courtesans. Much cultured, often able to compose poetries and rhymes, skillful in conversation, music and song, they were admired not only by their masters (?) but also by the Venetian people. In the collection Querini Stampalia a painting shows the gondola promenade of the courtesans, all of them rich dressed and greeted from the people along the banks.
Veronica Franco, probably the most famous of all courtesans, is represented in a picture of the Doge’s Palace celebrating the arrival of the future king of France Enrico III to Venice. She is shown while eyeing up maliciously from her gondola to the spectator. According to the tradition Veronica spent a night with the French guest; we don’t know anything about the political result of her involvement but the picture seems to testify that the Republic wanted to thank her.
In the 1600's cultured women as the Venetian-Jew Sara Copio Sullam at her home in the Ghetto, or Barbara Strozzi animated private meetings and cultural academies; in 1678, at the Padova University, Elena Corner Piscopia became the first woman to obtain the bachelor.
In the 1700's women lived the public spaces with greater freedom. In the many cafes of the city, in the theatres, at the markets, and above all at concerts held in the churches or in private palaces, women became more visible.
Some aristocratic women hold salon in their ‚ridotti’, intimate places, where smaller rooms and delicate stucco decorations encouraged conversation. The topics could be literary, but often they focussed on political subjects. The State Inquisitors, who accused her of interference in the State affairs, closed the ridotto of the patrician lady Caterina Dolfin in St Zulian.
In the ridotto of Barbarian Cornelia in St Maria Formosa gathered several intellectuals of the time, like for example Goldoni and Metastasio.
The paintress Rosalba Carriera became famous in Europe thanks to its delicate pastel portraits, while the soprano Faustina Bordoni exhibited in the courts of Monaco, Vienna and Dresda.
http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/1091.html
Interesting infos about Venetian Courtesans :
