In the Company of the Courtesan

In the Company of the Courtesan is a historical novel published in 2007 by Sarah Dunant. Set in 16th-century Italy, the novel traces the career of an expensive courtesan modeled on the woman portrayed in Titian’s famous painting “The Venus of Urbino,” and the associates and lovers who form her social circle. As she flees Rome and has to rebuild her livelihood in Venice, the reader gets a well-researched and de-glamorized look at the intrigue, politics, beauty, superstition, and dirt that define the Renaissance world around her.

Our narrator is Bucino Teodoldi, who is the loyal companion, business partner, and pimp of Fiammetta Bianchini, a 23-year-old courtesan whose clientele are the most elite of the upper classes. Where Fiammetta is perfect-looking, Bucino is not only a dwarf but is also quite ugly. In public, he helps set off her beauty – and in private, he is her confidant, close friend, and shrewd and coarse conversational partner. Both are witty, ambitious, and on the make.

The novel opens in Rome on May 6, 1527. As Fiametta is getting ready for another assignation with her latest patron, a high-ranking cardinal, her luxurious life is disrupted by the invasion of the Holy Roman Emperor, whose army is buttressed by Spanish and German Protestant troops. Fanatical Lutherans hack off Fiammetta’s prized possession – her long golden hair – and she and Bucino have no option but to flee. Both swallow some of Fiammetta’s jewels and head to Fiammetta’s hometown of Venice.



Venice is both luxurious and squalid, both full of immense riches and abject misery and poverty. When they arrive, Fiammetta and Bucino move into her dead mother’s house, but since Fiammetta is in terrible health after the flight, she asks for help from her childhood friend La Draga, a fictionalized version of the real-life enigmatic figure Elena Crusichi. La Draga is blind and disabled, and also possibly a witch and possibly has psychic powers. She is able to heal Fiammetta.

Bucino gets the lay of the land and figures out that courtesans who want to ply their trade advertise by being seen in a specific church. He also runs into Pietro Aretino, a real writer whose political satires caused a scandal in Rome, and who in the world of the novel has had a relationship with Fiammetta.

A recovered Fiammetta strikes up a seductive conversation with a rich Turkish man. But, it turns out that the Turk’s admiration is primarily directed to Bucino, who is invited to become a human novelty in the court of the sultan. Still, Fiammetta won’t be able to get to her previous social level without fixing her cropped hair. La Draga proposes an expensive cosmetic solution, but when Bucino tries to pawn one of the ruby gems they smuggled out of Rome at the pawnshop of a young Jewish money-lender, he finds that it has been replaced with a glass replica.



Bucino’s research shows that the highest-class courtesans live in the center of the city, but Fiammetta doesn’t have the money to move and instead decides to try to work from a gondola. In the meantime, to raise funds, Bucino wants to sell a prized book of poems that Fiammetta treasures – only to discover that the book is actually full of Aretino’s pornographic poems and drawings. Rather than selling it, the pair blackmail Aretino into helping them find Fiammetta’s first real patron.

However, as the years go by, the more successful Fiammetta becomes, the more her relationship with Bucino is tested. Partly the tension is caused by Bucino’s suspicions and jealousy of La Draga. They are also pulled in opposite directions by the passion Fiammetta feels for a patron who truly falls in love with her, making her let down and neglect her other paying clients.

During a riot, Bucino is pushed into the canals by the crowd and becomes seriously ill. As La Draga nurses him back to health, he and Fiammetta reconnect and forgive each other for past mistakes. After recovering, Bucino seeks out La Draga in order to thank her – but at her house he finds out that she is neither disabled, nor blind. Feeling deeply betrayed because he had felt some level of kinship with the woman because he assumed they were both physically other, Bucino steals a bag of bones and other scientific materials he finds and throws them into the canal. When the bones are found and identified, La Draga is convicted of practicing witchcraft. Bucino makes amends for his actions, but there is nothing either he or Fiammetta can do to save the woman – and soon she is executed.



The book ends with the arrival of La Draga’s young daughter, also named Fiammetta – taking care of her will be the way that Fiammetta and Bucino atone for their mistakes.

The novel was praised when it came out, both for the depth of the research that colors a believable grungy Renaissance Venice, and for the absorbing quality of the plot and characters. As Virginia Rounding writes in The Guardian, “Sarah Dunant is a highly satisfying storyteller, and in her hands 16th-century Venice comes to life convincingly. Her skill is evident in the fact that the ‘real’ characters - including the writer and ‘scourge of princes’ Pietro Aretino, and the painter Titian - do not seem out of place among their fictional counterparts.”