Wide view of Venice: Piazza San Marco - Riva degli Schiavoni

The Poet mask

This Poet character is definitely a tease. He wears here some female items:

  • Female shoes that are sort of chopines
  • Muff hand warmer (but men used it too)
  • Weird hat with two flowers and a gown ...

And he introduces himself as a sort of fake intellectual with lustful propositions:

"Signora io son Poeta e hò vena soda
C'se vi piace sopra il vostro bello
Un sonetto farà con lunga coda."

"Lady I am a Poet and I have a hard vein
That if you like your boyfriend on top
A sonnet will he make with a long tail."

I am reading and not explaining here the quite foul proposition I see, in which our poet mixes the musical idea of a poem that lasts ... for a long time.

I may be wrong - but I am not - since this image is coming from the book "Nuovo Itinerario d'Italia di Francesco Scoto ..." (New Itinerary of Italy by Francesco Scoto ...) printed in Padova in 1659, where all Bertelli's etchings (same characters) have sort of a "sexual pun" in the images he presents about Carnival masks and characters.

From the same book: Pulisinella, Berlingaccio, Bragato, Maschera da Coltra, Maschera da Vechia ...

Etching by Pietro Bertelli: Cingana (Gipsy Fortune Teller) - 
from: Diversarum Nationum Habitus (Clothing of Different Countries) - etching (1589-1592)
Francesco Bertelli: "Il Poeta" (The Poet)
from: "Nuovo Itinerario d'Italia di Francesco Scoto ..."
(New Itinerary of Italy by Francesco Scoto ...) - etching (1659)

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