The Temptations of Foreign Travel

A Venetian courtesan leads a blindfolded young man to her bed
detail from British Library Additional MS 18991 (The Friendship Album of Moyses Walens) fol. 46r.

For an enlargeable image of the whole page, go to BL Collection Items and choose image 26.

This is one of the paintings in the Album Amicorum (‘Friendship Album’) of the German student Moyses Walens from Cologne, who (probably) visited Italy some time between 1605 and 1615. The Friendship books were like highly elaborate autograph albums, in which your friends painted (or commissioned an artist to paint) scenes to remind you of the highlights of your trip — or moral reflections on your potential experiences. Many of the images are however copied from existing engravings rather than life. A few of the scenes in this book are unmistakably Venetian: a trip in a gondola (no 18), possibly a Venetian masquerade (no 12): but they also include an image of the famous sandyacht designed for Prince Maurice of Naussau around 1602 bowling along the beach at Scheveningen (no 16). The woman in this picture is definitely Venetian and a courtesan: she has a distinctively horned hairstyle, and her very high platform shoes are placed neatly by her bed. She was not, however, a piece of genuine reportage: the scene is copied from the copy of a engraving by Crispijn de Passe Hortus Voluptatum (Cologne: 1599); see British Museum Collection; but her hairstyle has been emphasised to make the identification with Venice clear. The fact that her victim is blindfolded reinforces the moral warning.