A Translation of Lorenzo Veniero's La Zaffetta

Everyone has heard of the infamous Italian author Pietro Aretino, master of the art of satirical poetry and father of modern pornography. His erotic dialogues and his lewd sonnets have been translated into English and are readily available to consult. What is less known, is that Pietro was surrounded by a large circle of disciples, or creati, who imitated his style so well that several works have been falsely attributed to him. One of these disciples was Lorenzo Veniero, friend of Pietro and author of two satirical poems, La Puttana Errante and La Zaffetta, which were initially believed to be part of Aretino’s oeuvre. These works, which were doubtlessly successful with the audience at the time they were written, were largely forgotten after the sixteenth century. The aim of this translation of La Zaffetta is not only to render the text accessible to an English-speaking audience, but also to recover the few sources we have on the lives of courtesans, the only women who were allowed to acquire wealth and rise to positions of power in Renaissance Italy