Sarah Dunant is the author of two multi-faceted and complex books of historical fiction, both set in Renaissance Italy - 2004's enchanting The Birth of Venus and the recent In the Company of the Courtesan. She recently answered some questions about blending fact and fiction, research and courtesan culture for our Historian.
Why did you choose to set In the Company of the Courtesan - and your previous novel, The Birth of Venus - in Renaissance Italy?
Basically I fell in love with Italy. Who wouldn't? Originally it was Florence, where I became obsessed by wondering what it would have been like to live there when the cultural revolution that was the Renaissance was actually happening. And as soon as one starts to live in Florence in the 15th century one cannot help but be thinking of Venice, since she was the other great power house of wealth and creativity.
What kind of research did you have to do for In the Company of the Courtesan? There's a wonderful bibliography at the end of the book.
I think the easiest way to answer this is to say it took as much time researching the book as it did writing it. For the first eighteen months I sat in libraries reading everything I could get my hands on, or was off tramping the streets/canals of Venice. The reality is you need both: the history with all its integration of culture and religion and politics and then, on a very different level, the atmosphere, the almost visceral sense of "being there". If you can get it right it's a great combination. And you as the writer learn so much. How wonderful is that!
What would have been the strangest and most interesting facts that you discovered during your research?
It is always the weirdest things that are true How about this: there was a street in Venice called the Street of the Tits. There prostitutes sat on the window ledges of the first floor with no tops on to attract passersby. The street was brought into being with the express support of the council of Venice because they were worried about the amount of homosexuality in the city and wanted men to be attracted to the right kind of carnal sin!
Your earlier novels had a contemporary setting. Why did you make the move to historical fiction?
I think this is almost the same answer as question one. I became hooked on Italy, hooked on Florence and hooked on that moment in the past when the city was in many ways the centre of the cultural world. But also I have since I was a child loved historical fiction. Not so much the romantic stuff, but the books that really make you feel as if you were there. (See last question below)
What made you decide to write about courtesan culture?
Oh, where do I start! Well how about where the book starts in Rome at the beginning of the 16th century, which is also the time when this kind of courtesan culture really began.
The Curia - the hierarchy and administration of the Catholic Church - in Rome was full of men who were meant to be celibate but, because the church was so corrupt, were not. (Popes had children, cardinals had mistresses). To keep this show on the road, so to speak, they needed access to women, but for obvious reasons did not want to frequent common prostitutes. Such men had a taste for culture and the high life, money and privilege and they were looking for women who understood that and who could also be discreet.
Enter the courtesan. While, for reasons of respectability, they could not be women of noble birth they could ape their manners. They had to be young, educated, beautiful, able to sing, read poetry, discuss cultural things, be smart, fun, good and available in bed and able to run a fine house; the kind of place where a man of substance would not be ashamed or uncomfortable to be seen in.
All this cost money so, of course, they needed patrons. Sometimes they were kept by one man but more often by a few. These women were often trained and managed by their mothers (some of whom had been courtesans before them) and in this way they kept the business in the family, even down to selling their daughter's virginity to the highest bidder. In this, and other ways, they are like European geishas.
Their window of opportunity was small, but a smart courtesan could earn a good living for a number of years. It was harder when it came to old age because a woman usually spent most of what she earned on running a good house and there are stories of older courtesans having to pawn their wealth or dying of the pox in poverty.
It took guts, skill and style to become a courtesan. And it gave a women a place which they couldn't aspire to elsewhere in the culture. It was, in short, an irresistible subject
As with The Birth of Venus, you have some real historical figures - including the artist Titian and the satirist/author Pietro Aretino - in this book. Why did you decide to use real people as characters? Is there a danger that the readers will treat this mixture of real and imaginary characters as real history?!
It is impossible to write about this period - especially Venice in the 1530's without bumping into real people. And especially within courtesan culture. Titian used courtesans as models and Pietro Aretino was Titian best friends and wrote scandalous stuff about the church, prostitution as well as political satire, so he is a marvelous commentator. Luckily he also wrote some tremendous letters so it is possible to get a sense of his voice and therefore turn him into a character.
I think the fact that fact and fiction blend is one of the things that - hopefully - makes the book exciting. As for where one ends and the other begins; well, in some ways as long as you come away feeling that you have somehow lived there with them I don't mind. Though I am very careful to make clear the difference between the two in the notes at the back of the book.
Why did you use the character Bucino, a dwarf who is, as the title says, in the company of the courtesan, as narrator?
Though I knew I wanted to write about courtesans I know I couldn't write for the perspective of one of them. While they were fabulous, sharp, cunning women, they were also - by definition of the job - vain, self absorbed, sometimes difficult and with their attention on the business at hand. I wanted to be able to look at them as well as live with them. Bucino was the perfect answer. In fact dwarfs were not uncommon in European society at that time. They were often kept rather like exotic pets. Catherine de Medici in France had a whole family of them, with a suite in her palace specially built for them. The great renaissance patron, Isabella D'este in Mantua, also kept them and the famous painting of the court of Mantua done by Montagna in the middle of the 15th century has a female dwarf as part of the extended family. They could be jesters or entertainers, but more importantly they were sometimes kept by courtesans, along with other exotics such as monkeys or parrots. Which did not preclude them being very smart and observant and players in their own right. The perfect set of eyes to tell the story - as Bucino turns out to be.
What books have been an inspiration to you?
In terms of writing historical fiction:
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Echo
Perfume by Patrick Suskin.
Restoration by Rose Tremain.
All of them brilliantly written, packed with imagination as well as a visceral sense of the past.
Is there any book that you'd recommend as a good discussion piece for a bookclub?
I think the three mentioned above would offer rich pickings.
