Moralizing the Music of an Italian Renaissance Courtesan: Barbara Salutati and Niccolo Machiavelli

Micah Buser*

School of Music, Canady Creative Arts Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506

Presentation Category: Oral-Human Engagement (Oral Presentation #16)

Student’s Major: Music Education

During the Italian Renaissance, courtesans used their musical talents to attract wealthy and powerful men to whom they functioned as escorts. Though little is known about her life and work, this presentation shows how Barbara Salutati, unlike other courtesans of her time, used her musical talents to her advantage by inspiring the creative output and everyday life of one of her most famous patrons, Niccolò Machiavelli. Public performances were not common for women during the Renaissance, but Salutati still took the stage often and under Machiavelli’s direction. But though courtesans like Salutati and a public figure like Machiavelli often had reputations that marked them as deceitful, immoral, and dangerous, these individuals curated their public images to be an antidote to such deceitful ills. To create an acceptable image for Salutati in the public eye, Machiavelli, and a commissioned artist, Domenico Puligo, blended aspects of Salutati’s career and appearance with the most visible markers of Christianity – even going so far as to compare her to Christianity’s most idealized woman, the Virgin Mary. This transformation was enacted within the framework of Machiavelli’s own views on religion in society: while he saw religion as a man-made system of beliefs, he found the moral behaviors encouraged by religion to be necessary elements of a well-ordered society. This project reveals how Salutati’s social and musical image, as the product of a collaborative creation between a courtesan and her high-profile client, both conformed to and challenged the narrative of the Italian Renaissance courtesan.

Funding: Federal Work Study

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: WVU's Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP) & accompanying HONR 297-level course