ARAGONA, Tullia d'

(1510-1556)

Tullia d'Aragona wrote poetry as well as a popular treatise on human love; she was also a well-known courtesan and controversial acquaintance of many of Italy's prominent literary figures. Tullia was born in Rome around 1510, the illegitimate daughter of Giulia Campana, herself a courtesan. According to Cam­pana, Tullia's father was a prominent cardinal of Aragona. Like her mother, Tullia was well trained in the musical skills that were paramount among the attractions of the cortegiane oneste, or higher-class courtesans. Her accomplish­ments suggest that she received a fine education; numerous contemporaries praised her eloquence and intellect.

Tullia's life was marked by mobility, perhaps due to greater government re­strictions on courtesans; she and her mother lived in Rome, Siena, Venice, Fer­rara, and Florence. Tullia counted many aristocrats and men of letters among her acquaintances, though not all of them were her admirers: she was denounced by satirists Pietro Aretino* and Agnolo Firenzuola.* She was praised, however, by the humanist Sperone Speroni,* in whose Dialogo di amore (Dialogue on Love) she appears as a principal interlocutor; she also met the poet Vittoria Colonna* after a church sermon by the Capuchin preacher Bernardino Ochino.* One of the most important relationships of her life was with the author Girolamo Muzio, her friend and lover; he dedicated several works to her and assisted Tullia in publishing her own writing. In 1543 she married one Silvestro Guic-ciardini, apparently as a formality to protect her from the accusations leveled against women of her profession. She also became close friends with the Flor­entine author Benedetto Varchi, with whom she formed a literary academy. When Tullia was denounced as a courtesan, she escaped the usual punishment of wearing a yellow veil in public because Varchi defended her as an established poet.

Perhaps to prove her status as a writer, Tullia published an anthology of 130 poems in 1547, dedicated to Eleanora of Toledo,* wife of Duke Cosimo de' Medici.* Along with Tullia's own poems, this popular edition included works by her admirers and acquaintances. With her treatise Dialogo della infinita d'amore (Dialogue on the Infinity of Love), which also appeared in 1547, Tullia added a woman's voice to the current debate on the subject of human love, arguing for the importance of the physical as well as the spiritual aspects of love. She also wrote a 30,000-line poem in octaves about a chivalrous adven­turer. Tullia's fortunes were less prosperous in her final years; she died in 1556 in Rome.

Bibliography

T. d'Aragona, Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, eds. R. Russell and B. Merry, 1997.

Jo Eldridge Carney