This study of Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) examines his use of new media and new literary kinds to project a construct of self that, invariably, overwhelms any individual work.¹ Although he long has been branded a talented, but amoral, upstart with a colossal ego, there have been some flickers of recognition that Aretino mythologizes himself:

When Aretino says that horses, a canal in Venice, and girls are all named after him, that he is the secretary of the world, he projects an image of himself as a giant … Aretino emerges as an Italian Gargantua, forever eating at banquets, imbibing...

In a famous letter to which we shall return more than once, Aretino explained retrospectively his intervention in theModiepisode. He begins with a defence of erotic art, progresses from art to life in maintaining that there is nothing shameful about viewing the sexual act itself, then advances a radical paradox: a praise of the penis as the most worthy part of the (male) body. Not only does it perpetuate the human race, it creates the best in life – notably, artists and writers – and everything beautiful, true, or holy. Aretino argues that the hands ought to be...

By the time he migrated from Rome to Venice, Aretino’s name had appeared in print, attached to volumes of poetry, four, possibly five, times; after five years in Venice, only two further books of verse extended the count. Then the deluge. Over a twenty-year span, an astonishing number of Aretino titles kept Italian presses running, reaching a total of 151 editions in his lifetime.¹ This crude, but not inaccurate, profile points to the difficulty of his transition from court poet topoligrafo. Putting aside his pasquinades and theSonetti lussuriosi, the three respectable publications in the Roman years – an...

Aretino was justly proud of having created a new literary kind, the book of vernacular letters by a living author; and his invention was phenomenally successful. At the beginning of the enterprise, in the flurry of activity to provide copy for Marcolini’s press, Aretino was busily collecting old correspondence and dashing off last-minute letters, finally filling out the volume by reprinting dedications from his earlier books; the complete run of theLetterewas published in January 1538, an instant best-seller. Within the year, it was reprinted seven times, once by Marcolini and by five other printers; there were five more...

Although Aretino’s powers as a satirist had been obvious since the day in Rome that he first attached verses to the statue of Pasquino, properly situating his work in the cinquecento literary landscape has proven a challenging task. The very profusion of satiric forms and modes in which he wrote frustrated the possibility of his identification with a distinct literary kind as, for example, Francesco Berni was associated withpoesia burlescaand Ariosto with Horatian verse satire.² Moreover, Aretino has been the victim of his own success in cultivating the image of a writer who spurns all artifice and tradition...

The head formed of phalli exploits a standard rhetorical device, synecdoche, the type of metonymy in which the part stands (here, ithyphallic joke within a joke, quite literally) for the whole. Phallic synecdoche in Renaissance art was a natural development from the illustration of priapic herms.¹ An anonymous copperplate engraving represents a young couple in sexual congress and, in explicit commentary, a giant, winged phallus with animal hindquarters.² The wings make the familiar play on ‘uccello’ (bird) as slang for the penis, a motif used with more subtlety in Marcantonio Raimondi’sThe Dream of Raphael(so called for no good...

An earlier chapter noted that Titian’sSelf-Portraitdrawing, cut in wood by Giovanni Britto, adapts the formula of Aretino’s author-portraits, a genre that Titian, of course, helped to create. TheSelf-Portraitis a visual dialogue, paying affectionate tribute both to Aretino’s success and their long friendship; at the same time, it is a competition, an outdoing. In assessing Titian’s achievement, Rona Goffen has insisted that we ‘take into account his lifelong concern (not to say obsession) with theparagone.’¹ For Titian, the competitiveness embraced the outdoing of ancient poets, notably Ovid in hispoesie; ancient artists, measuring his successes against...