Abstract
ABSTRACT This article examines the reception of professional actresses in Counter-Reformation Italy and explores the causes and phases of their transformation from meretrices to dive. The first part analyses a range of primary sources that report the arguments advanced by their detractors, in particular members of the clergy, for the social exclusion of actresses. It then considers their training as a reason for their inclusion within academies and for their recasting as dive. The second part of the article looks at a selection of published and unpublished encomia composed by different academicians for the actress and singer Virginia Ramponi (1583–c. 1631), and aims to reassess the relationship between actresses and academies in early modern Italy.
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