Portrait of Pietro Aretino

Pietro Aretino made his living by fear. In the Italy of the early 1500s he was the writer that princes paid to stay on the good side of, a satirist so quick with praise and slander that he called himself the scourge of princes. He settled in Venice, where Titian became a close friend and painted him more than once, the best-known versions now in Basel, New York and Florence. This small canvas in a private Milan collection shows him as well, and it comes with an argument attached. Some scholars date it to around 1511 or 1512, which would make it a strikingly early likeness, from years when Aretino was barely 20 and Titian had hardly started out. Others doubt that early date, and doubt whether Titian's hand is really here at all. The catalogues list it as attributed to him, and leave the question open.