22 Facts About Pietro Aretino

Pietro Aretino was an Italian author, playwright, poet, satirist and blackmailer, who wielded influence on contemporary art and politics.

Pietro Aretino was one of the most influential writers of his time and an outspoken critic of the powerful.

Pietro Aretino gained prominence through his politically charged writings and biting satire, which targeted powerful figures, including monarchs and popes.

Pietro Aretino's works spanned various genres, including poetry, drama, and religious commentary, but he is particularly noted for his lampoons and erotic literature.

Pietro Aretino is remembered for an exchange of letters he had with Michelangelo concerning the latter's fresco The Last Judgment.

Pietro Aretino was a key figure in 16th-century Italian cultural and literary circles, earning both admiration and condemnation for his fearless critique of authority.

Pietro Aretino's father was Luca Del Tura, a shoemaker from Arezzo, in Tuscany, Italy, who abandoned his family to join the militia.

Pietro Aretino spent a formative decade in Perugia, before being sent, highly recommended, to Rome.

When Hanno the elephant, pet of Pope Leo X, died in 1516, Pietro Aretino penned a satirical pamphlet entitled "The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno".

The installation of the Dutch pope Adrian VI instead encouraged Aretino to seek new patrons away from Rome, mainly with Federico II Gonzaga in Mantua, and with the condottiero Giovanni de' Medici.

Pietro Aretino was a lover of men, having declared himself "a sodomite" since birth.

Safe in Venice, Pietro Aretino became a blackmailer, extorting money from men who had sought his guidance in vice.

Pietro Aretino "kept all that was famous in Italy in a kind of state of siege", in Jacob Burckhardt's estimation.

At one time, Pietro Aretino owned the painting by Parmigianino, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.

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

Pietro Aretino was a close friend of Titian's, who painted his portrait three times: a 1527 portrait in the Kunstmuseum Basel, a 1537 portrait in the Frick Collection, and a 1545 portrait in the Pitti Palace.

At various stages of his life Pietro Aretino was portrayed by Sebastiano del Piombo, Alessandro Moretto, Francesco Salviati, Jacopo Tintoretto, and Giorgio Vasari.

Pietro Aretino's portrait was engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi and Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio.

Pietro Aretino's likeness was reproduced on medals by Leone Leoni, Francesco Segala, Alfonso Lombardi, and Alessandro Vittoria and his image was sculpted by Jacopo Sansovino and Danese Cattaneo.

Pietro Aretino is frequently mentioned in English works of the Elizabethan and later periods and differently appreciated, in comments ranging from "It was one of the wittiest knaves that ever God made" of Nashe to "that notorious ribald of Arezzo" of Milton's Areopagitica.

Those who claim that there was a sarcastic epitaph in hendecasyllables suspect that it should be attributed to Bishop Paolo Giovio, and that it was composed when Pietro Aretino was still alive:.

Once again, Pietro Aretino's texts proved controversial: at a 2008 performance at Cadogan Hall, London, the printed programs were withdrawn following allegations of obscenity.