Portrait of Pietro Aretino

Pietro Aretino was neither prince nor soldier but a writer, and he frightened both. From Venice he poured out satires, letters and open scandal, praising or ruining reputations for pay, until people called him the scourge of princes. Kings sent him gifts to stay on his good side. He was a close friend of the painter Titian, who portrayed him several times, and the original behind this copy came out of that Venetian circle. Aretino also wrote some of the most notorious erotic verse of the century, which kept his name off polite shelves for generations. He is said to have died laughing, tipped backward off his chair at a bawdy joke about his own sister.