Tra Venezia, Ferrara e altre città. Intrecci amorosi sulla scena urbana del primo Cinquecento

Between Venice, Ferrara and Other Cities: Amorous Ties on the Urban Scene in the Early   Sixteenth Century · If Venice is the main context where the illicit lovers Maria Savorgnan and Pietro Bembo met furtively for over a year and a half between 1500 and 1501, their affair also spanned across other cities: Udine, Padua, Ferrara. Family choices and networks, wealth legacies and liv-   ing habits came into play and were hardly confined to a single town. This article explores the urban scene of their liaison, focusing in particular on Venice, with its secluded and safe meeting places, and then Ferrara, where the clandestine relationship between the poet Ludovico Ariosto and his lover Alessandra Benucci similarly unfolded more or less in the same years. The two parallel love affairs offer insights into the culture of living between the countryside and the city, as well as the intra- and inter-urban mobility of early modern women and men, in the Italian Renaissance.