Franco, Veronica

(1546-1591)

   Venetian courtesan and poet, the daughter of a procuress and a merchant. Because of her father's ancestry, she had a certain degree of social standing and eventually became a semi-respectable, high-class prostitute in the 1560s, ex-changing poems with prominent male poets of her time. She compiled anthologies of their poems and in 1575 published a volume of her own poems, which (contrary to the usual conventions of Italian poetry) are sexually explicit and assert her literary as well as her sexual independence. In 1580 she published a collection of letters, Lettere familiari a diversi / Familiar Letters to Various Persons, that reflects the influence of ancient authors like Cicero and Seneca. In 1580 she was charged with engaging in magic, and though she was acquitted, the accusation damaged her reputation and she died in poverty.