Pietro Aretino  

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"Aretino, like Baudelaire, has been the victim of a legend, a legend which he encouraged, rather than discouraged. When they accused him of being the son of a prostitute, he admitted it. When it was found that he was, really, the son of a shoemaker (acconciator di scarpe), which was far more damning, he trumpeted the fact to the world in a letter to the Duke of Medici. Like Baudelaire, he was quite willing to do anything pour èpater la bourgeoisie, and, like the author of Les Fleurs du mal, he paid the penalty. Baudelaire had his Maxime du Camp, of whom Huneker so effectually disposes (see his “The Baudelaire Legend” in Egoists); Aretino had his pseudo-Berni. And the resulting legend, in each case, has displayed a surprising persistence, and resistance to the discoveries of scholars."-- The Works of Aretino (1926) by Samuel Putnam


"His literary talent, his clear and sparkling style, his varied observation of men and things, would have made him a considerable writer under any circumstances, destitute as he was of the power of conceiving a genuine work of art, such as a true dramatic comedy; and to the coarsest as well as the most refined malice he added a grotesque wit so brilliant that in some cases it does not fall short of that of Rabelais."-- The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1855) by Jacob Burckhardt


"Charles V. and Francis I. both pensioned him at the same time, each hoping that Aretino would do some mischief to the other. Aretino flattered both, but naturally attached himself more closely to Charles, because he remained master in Italy."-- The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1855) by Jacob Burckhardt


"Speak plainly, and say cu', ca', po' and fo'." --Ragionamenti (1534–36) by Pietro Aretino

Image:I Modi, by Raimondi.jpg
Posture I of I Modi (1524) by Marcantonio Raimondi

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Pietro Aretino (1492 – 1556) was an Italian author and satirist. He wielded immense influence on 16th century Italian art and politics and is generally cited as the earliest example of European erotica and hack writing. Today, he is best known for his poetry Sonetti lussuriosi, his whore dialogue Ragionamenti and a letter to Michelangelo on the Last Judgement.

Contents

Life

Born out of wedlock in Arezzo (Aretino, "from Arezzo"), very casually educated then banished from his native city, Aretino spent a formative decade in Perugia, before being sent, highly recommended, to Rome. There Agostino Chigi, the rich banker and patron of Raphael, took him under his wing.

When Hanno the elephant, pet of Pope Leo X, died in 1516, Aretino penned a satirical pamphlet entitled "The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno." The fictitious will cleverly mocked the leading political and religious figures of Rome at the time, including Pope Leo X himself. The pamphlet was such a success that it started Aretino's career and established him as a famous satirist, ultimately known as "the Scourge of Princes."

Aretino prospered, living from hand to mouth as a hanger-on in the literate circle of his patron, sharpening his satirical talents on the gossip of politics and the Papal Curia, and turning the coarse Roman pasquinade into a rapier weapon of satire, until his sixteen ribald Sonetti Lussuriosi written to accompany Giulio Romano's exquisitely beautiful but utterly pornographic series drawings engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi under the title I Modi finally caused such outrage that he had to temporarily flee Rome.

After Leo's death in 1521, his patron was Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, whose competitors for the papal throne felt the sting of Aretino's scurrilous lash. The installation of the prudish Fleming Adrian VI ("la tedesca tigna" in Pietro's words) instead encouraged Aretino to seek new patrons away from Rome, mainly with Federico II Gonzaga in Mantua, and with the condottiero Giovanni de' Medici ("Giovanni delle Bande Nere"). The election of his old Medici patron as Pope Clement VII sent him briefly back to Rome, but death threats and an attempted assassination from one of the victims of his pen, Bishop Giovanni Giberti, in July 1525, set him wandering through northern Italy in the service of various noblemen, distinguished by his wit, audacity and brilliant and facile talents, until he settled permanently in 1527, in Venice, the anti-Papal city of Italy, "seat of all vices" Aretino noted with gusto.

"In a letter to Giovanni de Medici written in 1524 Aretino encloses a satirical poem saying that due to a sudden aberration he has fallen in love with a female cook and temporarily switched from boys to girls..." (My Dear Boy)

From the security of Venice Aretino "kept all that was famous in Italy in a kind of state of siege," in Jakob Burckhardt's estimation. Francis I of France and Charles V pensioned him at the same time, each hoping for some damage to the other. "The rest of his relations with the great is mere beggary and vulgar extortion," was Burckhardt's assessment of a man the 19th century found utterly unprincipled, an abject flatterer, the object of judgmental disgust and yet the father of modern journalism:

"His literary talent, his clear and sparkling style, his varied observation of men and things, would have made him a considerable writer under any circumstances, destitute as he was of the power of conceiving a genuine work of art, such as a true dramatic comedy; and to the coarsest as well as the most refined malice he added a grotesque wit so brilliant that in some cases it does not fall short of that of Rabelais."
—Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1855.

Apart from both sacred and profane texts— a satire of high-flown Renaissance neo-Platonic dialogues is set in a brothel— and comedies such as La cortigiana and La talenta, Aretino is remembered above all for his letters, full of literary flattery that could turn to blackmail. They circulated widely in manuscript and he collected them and published them at intervals winning as many enemies as it did fame, and earned him the dangerous nickname Ariosto gave him: flagello dei principi ("scourge of princes"). The first English translations of some of Aretino's racier material have been coming onto the market recently.

La cortigiana is a brilliant parody of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, and features the adventures of a Sienese gentleman, Messer Maco, who travels to Rome to become a cardinal. He would also like to win himself a mistress, but when he falls in love with a girl he sees in a window, he realizes that only as a courtier would he be able to win her. In mockery of Castiglione's advice on how to become the perfect courtier, a charlatan proceeds to teach Messer Maco how to behave as a courtier: he must learn how to deceive and flatter, and sit hours in front of the mirror.

Aretino was a close friend of Titian, who painted his portrait (illustrations) at least three times. The early portrait is a psychological study of alarming modernity. Clement VII made Aretino a Knight of Rhodes, and Julius III named him a Knight of St. Peter, but the chain he wears for his 1545 portrait may have merely been jewelry. In his strictly-for-publication letters to patrons Aretino would often add a verbal portrait to Titian's painted one.

He is said to have died of suffocation from "laughing too much."

Major works

Commedie:

Tragedie:

Biography

Born out of wedlock in Arezzo (Aretino, "from Arezzo"), very casually educated then banished from his native city, Aretino spent a formative decade in Perugia, before being sent, highly recommended, to Rome. There Agostino Chigi, the rich banker and patron of Raphael, took him under his wing.

When Hanno the elephant, pet of Pope Leo X, died in 1514, Aretino penned a satirical pamphlet entitled "The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno." The fictitious will cleverly mocked the leading political and religious figures of Rome at the time, including Pope Leo X himself. The pamphlet was such a success that it kickstarted Aretino's career and established him as a famous satirist, ultimately known as "the Scourge of Princes."

Aretino prospered, living from hand to mouth as a hanger-on in the literate circle of his patron, sharpening his satirical talents on the gossip of politics and the papal curia, and turning the coarse Roman pasquinade into a rapier weapon of satire, until his sixteen ribald Sonetti Lussuriosi written to accompany Giulio Romano's exquisitely beautiful but utterly pornographic series drawings engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi under the title I Modi finally lost him the public patronage of Pope Leo X.

After Leo's death in 1521, his patron was Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, whose competitors for the papal throne felt the sting of Aretino's scurrilous lash. The installation of the prudish Fleming Adrian VI ("la tedesca tigna" in Pietro's words) instead encouraged Aretino to seek new patrons away from Rome, mainly with Federico II Gonzaga in Mantua, and with the condottiero Giovanni de' Medici ("Giovanni delle Bande Nere"). The election of his old Medici patron as Pope Clement VII sent him briefly back to Rome, but death threats and an attempted assassination from one of the victims of his pen, Bishop Giovanni Giberti, in July 1525, set him wandering through northern Italy in the service of various noblemen, distinguished by his wit, audacity and brilliant and facile talents, until he settled permanently in 1527, in Venice, the anti-Papal city of Italy, "seat of all vices" Aretino noted with gusto.

"In a letter to Giovanni de Medici written in 1524 Aretino encloses a satirical poem saying that due to a sudden aberration he has fallen in love with a female cook and temporarily switched from boys to girls..." (My Dear Boy)

From the security of Venice Aretino "kept all that was famous in Italy in a kind of state of siege," in Jakob Burckhardt's estimation. Francis I of France and Charles V pensioned him at the same time, each hoping for some damage to the other. "The rest of his relations with the great is mere beggary and vulgar extortion," was Burckhardt's assessment of a man the 19th century found utterly unprincipled, an abject flatterer, the object of judgmental disgust and yet the father of modern journalism:

"His literary talent, his clear and sparkling style, his varied observation of men and things, would have made him a considerable writer under any circumstances, destitute as he was of the power of conceiving a genuine work of art, such as a true dramatic comedy; and to the coarsest as well as the most refined malice he added a grotesque wit so brilliant that in some cases it does not fall short of that of Rabelais."
—Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1855.

Apart from both sacred and profane texts— a satire of high-flown Renaissance neo-Platonic dialogues is set in a brothel— and comedies such as La cortigiana and La talenta, Aretino is remembered above all for his letters, full of literary flattery that could turn to blackmail. They circulated widely in manuscript and he collected them and published them at intervals winning as many enemies as it did fame, and earned him the dangerous nickname Ariosto gave him: flagello dei principi ("scourge of princes"). The first English translations of some of Aretino's racier material have been coming onto the market recently.

La cortigiana is a brilliant parody of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, and features the adventures of a Sienese gentleman, Messer Maco, who travels to Rome to become a cardinal. He would also like to win himself a mistress, but when he falls in love with a girl he sees in a window, he realizes that only as a courtier would he be able to win her. In mockery of Castiglione's advice on how to become the perfect courtier, a charlatan proceeds to teach Messer Maco how to behave as a courtier: he must learn how to deceive and flatter, and sit hours in front of the mirror.

Aretino was a close friend of Titian, who painted his portrait (illustrations) at least three times. The early portrait is a psychological study of alarming modernity. Clement VII made Aretino a Knight of Rhodes, and Julius III named him a Knight of St. Peter, but the chain he wears for his 1545 portrait may have merely been jewelry. In his strictly-for-publication letters to patrons Aretino would often add a verbal portrait to Titian's painted one.

See also

Translations

Linking in in 2022

Anal sex, 1490s in poetry, 1490s, 1492, 1527 in art, 1527 in literature, 1527 in poetry, 1550s, 1556 in literature, 1556 in poetry, 1556, 16th century in literature, 8 Lust Songs: I Sonetti Lussuriosi, Accademia degli Infiammati, Agnolo Firenzuola, Agostino Chigi, Alcibiades the Schoolboy, Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, Andrea Calmo, Anti-Catalanism, Aretino and Charles V's Ambassador, Arezzo, Baldassare Castiglione, Bartolomeo Panciatichi, Belvedere Torso, Bénigne Dujardin, Bianca Riario, Camilla Pisana, Catherine de' Medici's patronage of the arts, Catherine of Alexandria, Christina, Queen of Sweden, Classical unities, Compagnie della Calza, Constantijn Huygens Jr., Constantine Arianiti, Courtesan, Death from laughter, Édouard-Henri Avril, Edward Hutton (writer), Enfer, Epicœne, or The Silent Woman, Equestrian Portrait of Charles V, Erotic art, Erotic literature, Francine Prose, Galatea (Raphael), Georg Büchner, George Bull (journalist), Giammaria Mazzucchelli, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Girolamo Maggi, Giulio Camillo, Hanno (elephant), Hans E. Kinck, History of Castel Goffredo, History of erotic depictions, History of the Jews in Regensburg, I Modi, Imperia Cognati, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, Ippolito de' Medici, Isabella d'Este, Italian literature, Jacopo Caraglio, Jacques Joseph Coiny, James Cleugh, Jean-Frédéric Waldeck, Joachim Trognaesius, John Fell (bishop), John Florio, La Gloria (Titian), Laocoön and His Sons, Leone Leoni, Les Onze Mille Verges, List of art critics, List of authors of erotic works, List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people: A, List of last words, List of Penguin Classics, List of people from Central Italy, List of people from Italy, List of playwrights by nationality and year of birth, List of playwrights, List of prostitutes and courtesans, List of Renaissance humanists, List of unusual deaths, List of works by Titian, List of works in the Palatine Gallery, List of years in literature, Lodovico Dolce, Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi, Madonna of the Rose (Parmigianino), Man with a Glove, Marcantonio Michiel, Marcantonio Raimondi, Maria d'Aragona, Martin van Maële, Monte Sacro Alto, Niccolò Franco (pamphleteer), October 21, Palazzo Bollani Erizzo, Pasquinade, Paul Van Dyke, Paul-Émile Bécat, Pier Maria III de' Rossi, Pierre Bourdelot, Pierre de Larivey, Pietro Accolti, Pietro, Pope Clement VII, Portrait of a Gentleman with a Letter, Portrait of Andrea Odoni, Portrait of Lozana: The Lusty Andalusian Woman, Portrait of Pier Maria Rossi di San Secondo, Portrait of Pietro Aretino, Raphael, Raymond Rosenthal, Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine, Roland, Samuel Putnam, San Luca, Venice, Scrittori d'Italia Laterza, Sebile, Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, Self-Portrait with a Friend, Siena Piano, Storia della letteratura italiana (de Sanctis essay), Storia d'Italia, The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr (Titian), The Conversion of Mary Magdalene, The Entombment (Titian, 1559), The Lady of Pleasure, The Last Judgment (Michelangelo), The Merchant of Venice, The Perfumed Garden, The Unfortunate Traveller, The Wedding at Cana, Tintoretto, Titian, Trifone Gabriel, Venetian ceruse, Venice, Venus in the Cloister, Venus of Urbino, Veronica Gambara, Vilshofen–Aidenbach railway, Whore dialogues, William Thomas (scholar), Xavier F. Salomon



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