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A library as a show piece?: Art patrons, a Florentine cortigiana onestà, and an in-house library study in “Arte”

Veronica’s study/library shown in the fifth chapter of the Arte manga

Back in November 2024, I wrote about the anime adaptation of Arte, which is set in Renaissance-era Italy, noting the library scenes in four episodes, noting how in the episode “Courtesan”, the protagonist, Arte, goes with her master, Leonardo, to the house of Veronica, a courtesan, and they visit her study. While there, she marvels at how impressive the library is, with Veronica saying she needs to entertain her gentleman callers with education, and she offers to let Arte borrow books from her collection, with the latter saying that while standing in her library she can’t view her with anything but respect, saying her respect is for how hard she works, not her profession. It is in this same place that Veronica counsels Arte on her love for her master, Leo, and where Arte realizes that while she will listen to Veronica, she can’t forgive how she treats her clients, as she learns what it truly means to be a prostitute.

In that same post, I also noted the brief library scene in the next episode (the fifth in the series), entitled “Inseparable Bond”, in which Arte goes to the library/study to get Veronica’s advice on speaking to a difficult client, and in the beginning of the eighth episode, entitled “A New Chapter”. In that episode, Arte and Veronica again talk in her study/library, with Veronica saying she couldn’t imagine Florence without Arte, and bidding her farewell as she prepares for her Venice trip. It is implied then that Darcia talks to Veronica afterward about reading (Arte teaches her to read), but not directly shown. In the final episode of the anime adaptation, entitled “Apprentice”, Leo visits Veronica in her study/library, and they talk about the art commission she is offering him, and she is willing to pay him more to make a good artwork (and to buy expensive materials), and she jokes that Arte “she prefers Venice over Florence,” something which likely gets to him, without a doubt. The manga is a bit different.

Veronica is introduced in the fourth chapter, but Arte and Leo do not meet her until the fifth chapter, when she is, again, called a cortigiana. At the time, cortigiana, meaning courtesan, some called them palace ladies, or donna di palazzo. Veronica would undoubtedly be a cortigiana onestà, which one scholar called “the high-‐class figure of female influence who achieved an unparalleled level of emancipation in the profoundly patriarchal world of Renaissance Italy.” [1] In the fifth chapter, she is described as renting a house with the money she makes as a courtsean (what we would now call a sex worker) and like in the episode “Courtesan” I mentioned earlier, Arte is impressed, and after Veronica declares she has read every book there, Arte is even more in awe. And she even gets to borrow books from the study, with Arte saying she respects Veronica’s hard work.

It is thanks to that fascination she gets her first commission, just as she does in the anime. She admires how intellectual Veronica is and is undoubtedly appreciative when she tells her that the feelings she has for Leo are romantic. Again, this generally follows the anime, including when she sees the terrible conditions that lower-class courtesans work within, and what love can do to someone, a narrative which continues into chapter six. Veronica is the one that tells her she doesn’t “have time” for love. The library itself continues to be shown as somewhere where Veronica shines, above anything else, giving her an allure of someone learned. All the while she treats her clients in a way that Arte (and most) find disreputable. This continues in chapter seven, when she dreads having to give Veronica the painting. An interesting scene, not in the anime, is when Leo comes to meet with Veronica, who says she will pay for the portrait in time, not “like one of those cheap prostitutes.”

What Arte says in the fifth chapter reflects how some people think of librarians. This view of Veronica changes as she gets to know her better

The scene goes so far that Leo says that Arte keeps “acting strange,” then she won’t be working at his workshop anymore, leading Veronica to advocate for Arte, saying it would be cruel to fire her, and saying she has taken a liking to Arte. This creates an interesting comparison between Arte, an apprentice barely earning anything, to Veronica, which he finds curious. Later on, Arte realizes she has to set things right, and realizes that Veronica hides “her struggles below her smiles.” She ends up giving her the painting, saying that while she can’t condone how Veronica treats her clients, she is doing it to have an independent life, and works hard in many ways. It is also revealed she is providing for the rest of her family as well!

Even so, Veronica acknowledges the job is “sinful” but she will continue to keep her smile until she dies. Even after all of this, she still wants to advise Arte on anything troubling her, as a friend, and Arte accepts this, as she knows it is important to have someone like her as a friend. In an interesting article I found, one scholar wrote that “during the Italian Renaissance, mythology and art contributed to the increasing popularity of the cortigiana, or courtesan.” That actually does fit with the series, with Veronica as an art patron! The latter is mentioned by Arte to Angelo in the next chapter. In the process of that discussion and others, she breaks through Angelo’s paternalistic attitude that girls need to be protected by men.

Some chapters later, Arte meets Veronica again in the library (at the end of chapter 10), [2] which continues in the next chapter, when she helps Arte negotiate with Ubertino. She reveals that he worked in the wool trade. What she tells Arte allows her to hold her own, teaching her everything from the beginning step by step, including proper posture, speech, and listening skills. She uses to this to appeal to him, especially using her lace art drawings, to pull him in. Veronica’s role in what some, historically, would call an “honored courtesan,” continues to be a major plot point in the story. In fact, Arte visits Veronica again in the beginning of the sixteenth chapter, when she gets a painting from Arte which she wants to keep herself, rather than giving it as a gift to someone. All the while, Veronica says she is expecting things from her, and she feels embarrassed to talk to her, like she is doing something “forbidden.”

It is her running into a Venetian noble afterward and his talking to Veronica, again in the study/library, is what leads Arte to her job in Venice. This is almost exactly what is portrayed in the anime. The same can be said of the eighteenth chapter, when Arte goes to Veronica again, this time asking about a dispute involving the daughter of Leo’s art master (Lusanna), in which she says that disputes over money involving widows is common. She is the one which gives the idea to Arte to approach a person with status and power: the Venetian noble (Mr. Yuri Falier) who wants her to travel to Venice to tutor his cousin, for a six-month period. Even Veronica is surprised that Arte is going so suddenly to Venice in the next chapter, saying it will be a “little lonely” in Florence without her. Again, it is implied that Dacia will go visit Veronica to get books to continue her study of reading and writing.

Arte confronts Veronica in the seventh chapter and states her principles.

Unlike in the anime, at the end of the nineteenth chapter, Dacia does visit Veronica, and is very nervous, saying she is only there because she is Arte’s friend. Veronica convinces her to sit and chat down for a bit, but no more is shown, because the story moves onto the next chapter. Nor does it appear in any other chapter, sadly. In fact, there aren’t any library scenes going forward as the story moves to the Venetian arc and there aren’t any scenes in Florence!

In writing this post, I am reminded what Italian history scholar Margaret F. Rosenthal wrote back in November 2018 for Renaissance Quarterly, examining how one cortigiana onestà, also known an “intellectual courtsean,” named Veronica Franco, was restricted in her professional activities, or whether socal forces compelled or contained her “cultivation of a literary identity” in Venetian society, and the maneuvers she adopted when she “obtained entrance into an elite literary circle.” [3] Similarly, another webpage I found comes to mind: cortigiana, like Veronica, enjoyed a “glamorous lifestyle augmented by an education that enabled intellectual interactions in a secular rather than a religious domain.” This was even reflected in paintings like the strongly erotic “Portrait of a Woman known as The Courtesan” by Jacopo Palma il Vecchio in about 1520. [4]

Ultimately, whether the library is a showpiece for Veronica or not, it is also a symbol of how she is a thinking person, an intellectual in her own right. The study/library is a place she can be here own, a place she can be dominant, more than anyone else.

Notes

[1] There’s even a Wikipedia page entitled “List of Italian Renaissance courtesans.”

[2] The aftermath of chapter 10, a feature describes her as “busty.”

[3] This article comes as no surprise considering that she wrote a book in 1992 entitled The Honest Courtesan about Veronica Franco, a courtesan in 16th-century Venice.

[4] Also see “Private Lives and Public Lies: Texts by Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance” by Fiora A. Bassanese.

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