01 Sep Courtesans and mistresses in art
Elegant women are a huge theme in art history, and people mostly assume, as they stroll through art museums, that they are looking at queens, duchesses, and the wives of the wealthy. But often enough, they aren’t. They are looking at royal “favorites,” mistresses, and courtesans. Courtesans are in fact a particularly large theme in art, probably bigger than queens and duchesses. But people today pass by them without realizing who or what they were, because courtesans, if they exist today, are not important in our culture, so we’re unaware of them.
What is a courtesan? A courtesan is a kind of sex worker, but a sex worker so fancy that you can’t pay her. She isn’t available for the short term or for specific sex acts or prices. Instead, she is an elegant lady whom you want to display on your arm. You need to court her, with gifts, in the hopes of becoming her patron (or one of two or three patrons, depending on how she plays the game). Women like this are not a prominent feature of American society today, but they have been in many cultures, such as Classical China and Japan, Ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, and above all Paris of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
In all of these places, courtesans had certain things in common. They were generally known not only for their beauty and sexiness but for their other talents: many were famous as singers and actresses, but some were known as poets, and in Ancient Greece, some were even reputed to be philosophers. And they always had a strong relationship (sometimes even as “friends with benefits”) with artists, who portrayed them in paintings, novels—and in particular in the opera, as in Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly, Thaïs, and above all La Traviata, which tells the story of one of Paris’ most famous courtesans of the 1840s, Marie Duplessis, the so-called Lady of the Camellias.
Courtesan with patron on an Ancient Greek wine cup
We find courtesans in many artistic traditions. Here is one from Ancient Greece, for instance. She is reclining on a bench with a man at a symposium—the kind of late-night drinking party that was the center of Ancient Greek social life. She is a typical courtesan: she is topless, so her attraction is clearly erotic, but they are not engaged in sex, but rather gazing into each other’s eyes while she plays a drinking game with her wine cup. She is portrayed as a kind of sexy entertainer.
Japanese courtesan
We also find them in Japanese art. Here you can see a courtesan out for her afternoon promenade, wearing all the traditional signs of the Japanese courtesan: many layers of elegant robes, a very elaborate hairstyle, a certain kind of extremely high clogs, and above all, the sash that ties her kimono with its bow in the front. Also, she is allowing just a hint of neck to be seen, which is a signal to potential patrons: the neck was regarded as the sexiest part of the body in traditional Japanese culture.
Courtesans vanished from European culture for a long time after Ancient Greece, but they reappeared in the Italian Renaissance—which is where we get the modern word for them. This started out as ‘cortigiana’ in Italian, a feminine version of the word for courtier, became ‘courtisane’ in French and thus ‘courtesan’ in English. They appear frequently in Western art from that time on. There are portraits
Grace Dalrymple Elliott, 18th century London’s most elegant courtesan
of successful courtesans, such as this portrait of the English courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott, who was the lover of many prominent men, including the Prince of Wales (the future George IV) and the Duc d’Orléans (Louis XVI’s pro-revolutionary cousin). Indeed, Grace Elliott was so fancy that she is portrayed almost as a princess, with her elegant dress of cloth of gold and a foot-high powdered hairdo in the style of Marie Antoinette (who was her friend!). There were also generic paintings of courtesans, because they were a big theme in the culture of the time. A great example is Duez’s painting ‘Splendeur’, now hanging in a special gallery about courtesans in the Decorative Arts Museum in Paris (which you can see on our Shady Ladies tour of Paris!). Splendeur is dressed to the nines, with her obviously dyed hair (the latest trend in 1870s Paris) and her lapdog. But somehow you can tell that Splendeur isn’t a society lady, but a fancy working girl: perhaps it is way her left eye is winking at the viewer. Somehow, though, Splendeur just doesn’t look as splendid as Grace Elliott. Presumably the painting contains a moral warning, that Splendeur will become Misère (poverty) after a while, as in Balzac’s book title The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans.
Interested in learning more? Let us introduce you to the scandalous women of history and art: read our blog, follow us on Facebook, and above all, take our Shady Ladies art museum tours!
Duez’ “Splendeur,” the Belle Epoque courtesan
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