The Portrait of Andalucian Lozana (original title in Spanish: Retrato de la Loçana andaluza, translated into English by Bruno Damiani in 1987 as Portrait of Lozana: The Lusty Andalusian Woman) was published in Venice by the Spanish Renaissance writer, Francisco Delicado, in 1528, after he escaped from Rome due to the anti-Spanish sentiment that uprose after the sack of Rome a year earlier. Published anonymously, the book contains a description of the life in Rome's underworld during the first third of the 16th century, focussing particularly on the world of immigrant women from Spain and Spanish Southern Italy. It includes one of the first accounts of women making beauty products, and working as beauty technicians. It is considered a book descendant of Celestina (written some thirty years before by Fernando de Rojas) because of the literary genre, the novel in dialogue, and one of the earliest manifestations of the picaresque novel. There is only one extant copy of the book, now in the National Library of Austria, Vienna. Plot summary The book begins in Cordoba where the sexually precocious Aldonza lives with her mother. After her mother's death, she moves to her aunt's house from where she escapes with Diomedes, a sea merchant. After travelling to many cities of the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East and changing her name to Lozana, they come to Marseille to meet the father of Diomedes, who, disgusted with his son, sends him to prison and pays a sailor to make Lozana disappear. However, the sailor disobeys the order given and takes Lozana to Livorno, where she continues her journey up to Rome. Without money, Lozana goes to the Spanish downtown in Rome to request help; there, the women see her abilities in cooking, and creating beauty products (although her face is a little bit disfigured by syphilis). After a Neapolitan woman gives her a servant called Rampin, Lozana makes an agreement with him so that he becomes, for a time, her servant and lover. Following the advice of a post man, and with the aid of a Jew called Trigos who installs her in a house he owns, she begins her new life as a prostitute. After few years, she becomes the madame of a brothel, then Lozana and Rampin move to Lipari; the book ends with a little narration about the sack of Rome. Literary significance and criticism One of the most