Contents
List of illustrations vii
Notes on contributors xv
Acknowledgements xix
Introduction: hunting for birds in the Italian Renaissance 1
Guido Ruggiero
Part I Visual testimony and verbal games
1 Satyrs and sausages:
erotic strategies and the print market in Cinquecento Italy 19
Sara F. Matthews-Grieco
2 The erotic fantasies of a model clerk:
amateur pornography at the beginning of the Cinquecento 61
Guido A. Guerzoni
3 From roosters to cocks:
Italian Renaissance fowl and sexuality 89
Allen J. Grieco
4 ‘The spirit is ready, but the flesh is tired’:
erotic objects and marriage in early modern Italy 141
Marta Ajmar-Wollheim
Part II Ritual eroticism and sociability
5 Public display of affection: the making of marriage in the
Venetian courts before the Council of Trent (1420–1545) 173
Cecilia Cristellon

vi erotic cultures of renaissance italy
6 Mail humour and male sociability: sexual innuendo in the
epistolary domain of Francesco II Gonzaga 199
Molly Bourne
7 Unlocking the gates of chastity: music and the erotic in the
domestic sphere in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy 223
Flora Dennis
8 Courtesan culture:
manhood, honour and sociability 247
Tessa Storey
Index 275