Ritratto di Veronica Franco di Paolo Caliari noto come Veronese, oggi conservato nel Worcester Art Museum.

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Portrait of Veronica Franco by Paolo Caliari known as Veronese, now in the Worcester Art Museum.

She was the most famous honoured courtesan of the Serenissima, esteemed and respected, mistress of men of culture, politicians, kings. She was also a wife and mother and, an extraordinary case for the times in which she lived, a delicate and refined poetess.

He was born in Venice in 1546 into a family belonging to the original citizen class. She had three brothers: Girolamo, who died during the plague of 1575, Orazio and Serafino. At the age of eighteen, she married the physician Paolo Panizza, whom she mentions only in her first will, drawn up when she was pregnant, in which she recommends to her mother, should she die in childbirth, as was very often the case with women in the past, to have him return her dowry. She soon separated and it is reasonable to assume that her six children were from different fathers.A woman of singular beauty, wit and

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