Pietro Aretino

Pietro Aretino (died 1556) was born in Arezzo in April 1492, the son of a shoemaker. Trained in Perugia, he went to Rome, where the banker Agostino Chigi protected him; obscene sonnets written to accompany drawings by Giulio Romano forced him to leave the city, and there in 1525 he escaped an assassination attempt. Settled in Venice in 1527, he lived there on the pensions of princes, among them Francis I and Charles V, and Ariosto nicknamed him “the scourge of princes”. He died in Venice on 21 October 1556.

In the catalogue 1

• EssayThe Letters of Pietro AretinoLetterePietro Aretino · 1537LiteraturePublic domain