Pietro Aretino

Some called him "The Scourge of Princes" whilst to others he was a rogue and a scoundrel. This is a new biography of Pietro Aretino, the sixteenth-century poet, satirist, journalist, publicist, propagandist, art critic, social climber, lothario, pornographer and blackmailer of Kings, Popes and Emperors. It is the astonishing story of a man who began life as the penniless son of a cobbler and his wife, the town harlot, who rose to amuse Pope Leo X, infuriate Pope Adrian VI with his acerbic pasquinades, and befriend Pope Clement VII. Minted as a Knight of Rhodes, given a pension (and a golden necklace of lying tongues) by the King of France, and permitted to ride at the side of the Emperor Charles V, Pietro Aretino refused to allow his modest social beginnings to define him. An entirely self-created individual, "The Divine Aretino" was arguably the first modern celebrity. He was the close friend of perhaps the greatest Venetian artist of his era, Titian. His "Lustful Sonnets" scandalised all of Rome, he had the nerve to teach Michelangelo how and what to paint, whilst his bestselling collections of candid and personable Letters leave us with an astonishingly vivid account of life in sixteenth-century Venice. This is the engaging portrait of a man, a poet, a lover, and a survivor in turbulent times.