Volume 34, Number 9 · May 28, 1987
Renaissance Beauties
By Charles Hope
Lives of the Courtesans: Portraits of the Renaissance
by Lynne Lawner
Rizzoli, 215 pp., $45.00
Until the establishment of the Kinsey Institute, no one, except perhaps when talking to his confessor or doctor, had any obvious reason to be entirely frank about his sexual behavior, and few people, in reading about the subject, wanted or expected accurate factual information. This makes the task of the historian investigating Renaissance sexual mores a particularly delicate one, for which evidence has to be gleaned from such diverse sources as census returns, sermons, legal records, literary texts, and private letters. The richest evidence, at least quantitatively, concerns courtesans, but it is also probably the least reliable.
Review, 3134 words
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