斯佩罗内·斯佩罗尼肖像

Two years before Titian painted him, Sperone Speroni had written a tragedy that Italian writers would argue about for the rest of the century. Canace put a brother and sister in love with each other, and Giambattista Giraldi answered with a pamphlet judging the play against Aristotle's rules and finding it guilty on nearly every count. Speroni was still defending it in public lectures in 1558, 14 years after this sitting. He taught logic at Padua and belonged to the Accademia degli Infiammati, the circle that argued Italian was fit for serious philosophy. Some 30 years after the portrait he was one of the readers asked to correct Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered in manuscript, and Tasso spent years answering the objections.