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A Satirist's Impresa: The Medals of Pietro Aretino
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
Characterized by Burckhardt as the father of modernjournalism, Pietro Aretino was the first vernacular writer to understand and exploit fully the resource of the printing press. But while some kinds of his writings anticipate now conventional varieties of journalism, such a label slights the more literary of his activities in drama, poetry, hagiography, and prose dialogue. The protean variety of Aretino's works made him both successor to Bembo as the leading man of letters in the 1530s and 40s and the model for the poligrafi who would succeed him. As with those poligrafi, a coherence to his activities can be seen in his posture as social critic; preeminently, in his secular compositions, Aretino writes as a satirist.
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References
1 See Grendler, Paul F., Critics of the Italian World, 1530-1560: Anton Francesco Doni, Nicolò Franco, and Ortensio Lando (Madison, WI, 1969), 3–19 Google Scholar; and Aquilecchia, Giovanni, “Pietro Aretino e altri poligrafi a Venezia,” in Storia della Cultura veneta, 3, pt. 2 (Vincenza, 1982), 61–98 Google Scholar.
2 Dionisotti, , “La letteratura italiana nell'eta del concilio di Trento,” in his Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin, 1967), 240 Google Scholar.
3 Particularly instructive on the comedies is Cairns, Christopher, Pietro Aretino and the Republic of Venice: Researches on Aretino and his Circle in Venice, 1527-1556 (Florence, 1985)Google Scholar, who describes Aretino's strategy as “the fusion of two plot constituents, a ‘literary' story—and a contemporary ‘historical’ reality” (180). See also his discussion of the respectful satire of Castiglione, 31-47. For the Seigiornate, see the valuable edition by Giovanni Aquilecchia (1967; rev. ed. Bari, 1975).
4 See Reynolds, Anne, “Francesco Berni: The Theory and Practice of Italian Satire in the Sixteenth Century,” Italian Quarterly 24, no. 94 (1983)Google Scholar: 5-15; also her “Francesco Berni e Anton Francesco Grazzini,” Critica letteraria 9 (1981): 453-64, esp. 463-64. On Ariosto's contemporary reputation as a Horatian satirist, see Peter DeSa Wiggins's introduction to his translation, The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto: A Renaissance Autobiography (Athens, OH, 1976), x-xii, xvi, and xvii-xxiv for his handling of sources. Satire 6:94.-96 adapts a passage from Horace to register Ariosto's sense of his difference from Aretino as a satirist.
5 Quoted horn Juvenal and Persius, with trans, by G. G. Ramsey, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1961). Ludovico Dolce, Aretino's associate, friend, and editor, published his own translation, Paraphrasi delta sesta satira di Giuvenale, in 1538.
6 Cairns, Aretino, 13-30, traces “The Roots of Power in Venice.” See also Aquilecchia, “Pietro Aretino,” 66-73; and Patricia H. Labalme, “Personality and Politics in Venice: Aretino, Pietro,” in Titian: His World and his Legacy, ed. David Rosand (New York, 1982), 119-32Google Scholar. It is suggestive that Aretino apparently never paid rent for the house that he occupied for twenty-two years. See Juergen Schultz, “The Houses of Titian, Aretino, and Sansovino,” in ibid., 82-89.
7 For the associations of satire with magic, see Elliott, Robert C., The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art (Princeton, NJ, 1960)Google Scholar.
8 See Scipione Casali, Gli annali delta tipografia veneziana di Francesco Marcolini (Forli, 1861; rpt., Bologna, 1953), no. 26; see also the introduction to Selected Letters, trans. George Bull (Harmondsworth, 1976), esp. 37-39.
9 The iconography of Aretino can be studied most conveniently in Lettere suU'artc di Pietro Aretino, commentary by Fidenzio Pertile, anded. EttoreCamesasca (Milan, 1960). See also Gerber, Adolf, Pietro Aretino Faksimiles (Gotha, 1915)Google Scholar.
10 See Selected Letters, no. 77; also Lettere: Il primo e il secondo libro, ed. Francesco Flora and Alessandro Del Vita (Verona, 1960), nos. 94, 240, 249.
11 The fullest account of these medals is that by Pertile, Lettere sull'arte 3:228-35. See also the biographical essays on Leoni (3:349-57) and Vittoria (3:525-27), to whom are attributed the medals of Caterina Sandella, Aretino's common-law wife, and of Caterina with Adria, Aretino's daughter. See also Alfred Armand, Les médailleurs italiens (Paris, 1883-87), and Plon, Eugène, Les Maîtres italiens au service de la Maison d'Autriche: Leone Leoni, sculpteur de Charles-Quint, et Pompeo Leoni, sculpteur de Philippe II (Paris, 1887)Google Scholar I have quoted Hill's, G. F. translation of the Vittoria motto from A Guide to the Exhibition of Medals of the Renaissance in the British Museum (London, 1923), 45 Google Scholar. Ariosto's praise of Aretino occurs in the Orlando Furioso, canto 46, stanza 14.
12 See Plon, Maitres, 253, and Aretino's letter to Leoni, quoted on 33. For other instances of Leoni's satyr symbols, see ibid., 182, 190-91.
13 See Hill, and Pollard, , Renaissance Medals from the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the National Gallery of Art (London, 1967)Google Scholar, no. 484a; and Pollard, , Italian Renaissance Medals in the Museo Nazionate ofBargello (Florence, 1985)Google Scholar 3: no. 760. Pollard generously summarizes the argument of this essay, 1302. The Segala attribution now has been refuted in an essay published while the present article was in press. See Scher, Stephen K., “Veritas Odium Parit: Comments on a Medal of Pietro Aretino,” The Medal 14 (spring, 1989): 4–11 Google Scholar .
14 Wind, , Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, rev. ed. (New York, 1968), 74 Google Scholar, n. 74. For Cavalli's medal, see Hill, A Corpus of the Italian Medals of the Renaissance before Cellini, 2 vols. (London, 1930), no. 267.
15 The seated Truth reverse combines two motifs familiar from sources other than Cavalli's medal. See, for instance, Cavino's reverse of Roma, seated on a cuirass, her right foot on a helmet, with Victory crowning her from behind (Kress nos. 406 and 408). For the satyr crouching beneath a foot, see, e.g., the School of Riccio plaquette, now called “Allegory of Spirit and Matter,” in Ulrich Middeldorf and Goetz, Oswald, Medals and Plaquettes from the Sigmund Morgenroth Collection (Chicago, 1943)Google Scholar, no. 205; also the titlepage emblem of Gabriele Symeoni, Le imprese heroiche et morali (Lyons, 1574).
16 Tervarent, Attributs et symboles dans I ‘art profane, 1450-1600, Dictionnaire d'un langage perdu (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 29 [Geneva, 1958]), 335. He confuses this with the 1537 Leoni medal. For a similar description, see Armand, Medailleurs 2:153, no. 11. The Leoni attribution is also accepted by Franco Rosati, Panvini, Medaglie eplacchette italiane dal Rinascimento al XVIII secolo (Rome, 1968)Google Scholar, no. 172.
17 Plon, Maitres, 254.
18 See Jolliffe, J. W., “Satire: Satura: ΣATYPOΣ. A Study in Confusion,” Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance 18 (1956)Google Scholar: 84-95, and for Casaubon's remarkable contribution, 93-94; and Peter E. Medine, “Isaac Casaubon's Prolegomena to the Satires of Persius: An Introduction, Text, and Translation,” English Literary Renaissance 6 (1976):271-98.
19 I quote the translation by Jolliffe, “Satire,” 87.
20 See Alvin Kernan, The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Renaissance (Yale Studies in English, 142 [New Haven, 1959]), 54-63. Jolliffe, “Satire,” 95, remarks the connection between satyr-satire and invective. For the popularity of Juvenal, see Medine, “Casaubon's Prolegomena,” 272-73.
21 Jolliffe's trans., “Satire,” 91.
22 See Robortello, , In librum Aristotelis de arte poetica explicationes (Florence, 1548)Google Scholar (Poetiken des Cinquecento, 8 [Munich, 1968]), 28; and, on Mazzoni, Weinberg, Bernard, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1961), 835 Google Scholar.
23 See Kaufman, Lynn Frier, The Noble Savage: Satyrs and Satyr Families in Renaissance Art (Ann Arbor, 1984), 65–66 Google Scholar and fig. 48.
24 See Prince d'Essling, Les livres a figures ve'nitiens de la fin du XVe siecle et du commencement du XVIe, pt. 1 (Florence and Paris, 1908) 2:234, no. 787.
25 Sermoni, altrimenti satire, e le morali epistole di Horatio, illustrepoeta lirica, insieme con la poetica. Ridotte da M. Lodovico Dolce (Venice, 1559), 314. On the “community of interests” between Aretino and Dolce, see Cairns, Aretino, 59-62, 238-41.
26 See Selected Letters, no. 32, 112-13, for a translation. On the Regole generali and the publication history of the Architettura, see Casali, Annali, no. 25; Mortimer, Ruth, Italian Sixteenth-Century Books (Cambridge, MA, 1974)Google Scholar, no. 471.
27 Translated by Nicoll, Allardyce in The Renaissance Stage: Documents ofSerlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach, ed. Barnard Hewitt (Coral Gables, 1958), 32 Google Scholar.
28 Quoted from Terence, with trans, by John Sargeaunt, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1959).
29 Ciceronis, M. Tulli, Laelius de Amicitia, ed. Clifton Price (New York, 1902)Google Scholar, XXIV, 89.
30 McPherson, David, “Roman Comedy in Renaissance Education: The Moral Question,” Sixteenth Century Journal 12 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 19.
31 See Woodward, William Harrison, Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance, 1400-1600 (Cambridge, 1906)Google Scholar(Reprint Classics in Education, 32 [New York, 1967]), esp. 236-37. Particularly instructive on the popularity of Terence is Doran, Madeleine, Endeavors of Art: A Study of Form in Elizabethan Drama (Madison, WI, 1963)Google Scholar, passim.
32 See McPherson, “Roman Comedy,” 19-30.
33 According to Harold Walter Lawton's tally, between 1470 and 1600 there were published 461 editions of the six comedies, fifty-nine editions of one or two comedies, for a total of 520 editions of the Latin text, quite aside from the various vernacular translations. See Lawton, Terence en France au XVIe siècle: Éditions et traductions (Paris, 1926; rpt. Geneva, 1970), Table 1, 263-71.
34 In addition to Lawton, ibid., see Renouard, Antoine-Augustin, Annatesdel'imprimeriedes Estienne, 2d. ed. (Paris, 1843)Google Scholar; Armstrong, Elizabeth Robert Estienne: Royal Printer (Cambridge, 1954)Google Scholar, esp. 79-86; and Schreiber, Fred, The Estiennes: An Annotated Catalogue of 300 Highlights of their Various Presses (New York, 1982)Google Scholar.
35 Schreiber, Estiennes, 51-53.
36 See Lawton, Térence en France, 265-66 and catalogue. On the general subject of “Tradizione classica e volgarizzamenti,” see Dionisotti, Geografia e storia, 125-78.
37 Herrick, Marvin T., Italian Comedy in the Renaissance (Urbana, 1960), 60 Google Scholar. Herrick details the indebtedness of specific comedies. For another succinct account of the Terentian influence, see Edmond M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi, “Introduction” to their translation, The Comedies of Ariosto (Chicago, 1975), xii-xxxiv. The plot of Aretino's La Tantala derives from the Eunuchus, possibly in the translation by Giovanni Giustiniani da Candia (see Cairns, Aretino, 164).
38 Lawton, Térence en France, no. 256. This is a reimpression of the 1517 Aldine edition (see no. 160). See also Terentii Comoediae sex, accurate sane, & diligenter emendatae (Venice, '534). 7v (Newberry Library copy. Not in Lawton?).
39 See, for example, the 1529 and 1541 Estienne editions (Lawton, Terence en France, nos. 199 and 250?) and Habes hie amice lector, P. Terentii Comoediae (Venice, 1539), IIIIV (Newberry Library copy). This seems identical to Lawton's no. 245 of which he recorded an incomplete specimen. Similar typographic emphases occur in the Italian translations: “IL COMPIACERE acquista amice, e / LA VERITA partorisce odio.” See Comedie di Terentio nuovamente di latino in volgare tradotte (Venice, 1538), 3V.
40 Erasmus, Collected Writings, 24: Literary and Educational Writings 2: De Copia I De Ratione Studii, ed. Craig Thompson (Toronto, 1978), 637; also 319-20,677. FortheAdagia, see Opera Omnia, ed. J. Leclerc (Leiden, 1703-06) 2:675A.
41 “One cannot hear truth, / even if she is prescribed to princes; / But [because] flatterers have so muzzled it / That she could not use her tongue.” See Gringore, CEuvres completes, ed. Ch. d'Hericault and A. de Montaiglon, 2 vols. (Paris, 1858-1877) 1:55. The passage is quoted by Lawton, Terence en France, 44. The association with satire survives in Robert Burton's parody: “But I must take heed, ne quid gravius dicam, that I do not overshoot myself, Sus Minervam, I am forth of my element, as you paradventure suppose; and sometimes Veritas odium parit, as he said, ‘verjuice and oatmeal is good for a parrot.’ ” See The Anatomy of Melancholy (London, 1898), “Democritus Junior to the Reader,” 55. See also Fielding: “ ‘Ay, ay, a great deal of Truth, I warrant you,’ cried Partridge, ‘Veritas odium parit’ ”; The Works of Henry Fielding, Vol. 3: The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, ed. Fredson Bowers and commentary by Martin C. Battestin (Wesleyan Edition [n. p., 1975]), 514. I am indebted to Professors Michael O'Connell and Howard D. Weinbrot, respectively, for these quotations.
42 See d'Essling, Livres, 276, no. 864, and Lawton, Terence en France, no. 88. For the commentary, see Aeli Donati Commentum Terenti, ed. Paul Wessner (Stuttgart, 1962). Donatus worries about Simo's approval of obsequious behavior, reminding us that “in theatro dicitur, non in schola” (1.62). His comment on Sosia's sentence rehashes Cicero.
43 Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (1878; rpt. Vienna, n. d.), 86.
44 See Grendler, Critics, 39, for Nicolò Franco's assistance as translator.
45 For Aretino's pre-Venetian career, see Luzio, Alessandro, Pietro Aretino nei primi suoi anni a Venezia e la corte dei Gonzaga (Turin, 1888)Google Scholar; and Innamorati, Giuliano, Tradizione e invenzionc in Pietro Aretino (Messina and Florence, 1957)Google Scholar.
46 See Cairns, Aretino, 38-42, quotation on 39, and table on 43.
47 The Stablemaster, trans. Bull, George, in Five Italian Renaissance Comedies, ed. Bruce Penman (Harmondsworth, 1978), 175 Google Scholar. For the original, see Aretino, Tuttele Opere, vol. 2: Teatro, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Milan, 1971), Marescako V.iii.3. Petrocchi, Bull, and Cairns do not annotate or mention Veritas odium parit. 48 Cairns, Aretino, 38. On Alfonso d'Avalos, see the essay by G. De Caroin Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1962) 4:612-16. He was the dedicatee of Aretino's Marfisa (1532), an unfinished epic in praise of the Gonzagas.
49 See Cairns, Aretino, 51-68, on the Pedant. For a discussion of Aretino's Erasmian sympathies in this period, see 69-96, 123-24.
50 See Lettere sull'arte 3:215, for Pertile's conjecture and an enumeration of books in which this portrait and motto appear. See also pis. 36-40. Titian is also thought to have done the titlepage illustration for Aretino's Stanze in lode di Madonna Angela Sirena (1537, Casali no. 20). See David Rosand and Muraro, Michaelangelo, Titian and the Venetian Woodcut (Washington, DC, 1976)Google Scholar, no. 42.
51 La Prima Parte de Ragionamenti di M. Pietro Aretino (Bengodi, 1584).
52 Lettere, n o , 121; the dates are 22 January and 8 February 1537.
53 Selected Letters, 103. Editions subsequent to the break with Franco change the addressee to Ludovico Dolce. The self-identification with truth remained a motif in Aretino's correspondence (see, e.g., the letter to A. F. Doni in September, 1550).
54 See Grendler, Critics, 48. Still useful is Luzio, Alessandro, “L'Aretino e il Franco,” Giornale storico delta letteratura italiana 29 (1897)Google Scholar: 229-83.
55 See, e.g., Dialogo di M. Nicolo Franco (Casale Monferrato, 1542); and La Philena di M. Nicolo Franco (Mantua, 1547). The La Philena titlepage is reproduced in Grendler, Critics, 77, fig. 3. The quotation is from Juvenal, Satire I, 29. Similarities between Franco's and Aretino's letters were pointed out by Parrella, P. P., “Le ‘Pistole Volgari’ di Nicold Franco e il I libro delle ‘Lettere’ dell’ Aretino,” Rassegna critica della letteratura italiana 5 (1900)Google Scholar: 97-122.
56 Rime di Nicolo Franco contro Pietro Aretino (Scrittori italiani e stranieri [Lanciano, 1916]), 15. These poems may have been published first in Casale Monferrato, 1541, but the Basel, 1548 edition is the earliest surviving. I am indebted to Professor Peter Marinelli for the following prose translation: “ Veritas odium parit is your saying, Aretino, to show the crowd that people hate and have a bad opinion of you only because you tell the truth. And if it is so, as indeed it is; if I say, as I have said a thousand times, that you are ignorant, and that in evil-doing you are an especially learned and perfect doctor: If I say, that you are a dishonest monster, that you perform your dirty business even with the porter who cleans out your garbage: and if I tell you, that you are the shame of the whole human sex, does it seem honest to you that you hold me in your hate because I tell the truth?”
57 “Quello ignorante che disse: ‘Veritas odium parit,’ mente per la gola, che l'imperatore, il papa, i re, i principi non si sdegnano che diciate loro la verita” bensi ve ne “presentano e premiano.” Quoted from Lettere sull'arte 3:231.
58 See Casali, Annali, no. 13; also Horatio F. Brown, The Venetian Printing Press, 1469-1800 (London, 1891; rpt. Amsterdam, 1969), 107.
59 I have not been able to examine a copy of this very rare work, relying of necessity on Casali's description. Marcolini used the Veritas filia Temporis mark in several different versions. See Casali, Annali, viii-ix. Some are illustrated by Mortimer, Italian Sixteenth- Century Books, nos. 107, 164, 530. The fullest discussion of its meaning is that by Fritz Saxl, “Veritas Filia Temporis,” in Philosophy and History: Essays presented to Ernst Cassirer, ed. Raymond Klibansky and H.J. Paton (Oxford, 1936; rpt. New York, 1963), 197-222. If Casali's description is accurate, Saxl mistakes the date of Marcolini's music publication copyright for the publication date of Cantus Liber.
60 Saxl, “Veritas,” 197. On Marcolini, see Quondam, Amedeo, “Nel Giardino del Marcolini: un editore veneziano tra Aretino e Doni,” Giornale storico della letterature italiana 157 (1980)Google Scholar: 75-116.
61 See Saxl, “Veritas,” 201, and Casali, Annali, 20, n. 4.
62 I borrow the phrase “Venetian personality,” from Labalme, “Personality and Politics,” 122.
63 Saxl, “Veritas,” 198.
64 For a helpful account, see Ridolfi, Roberto, The Life of Francesco Guicciardini, trans. Cecil Grayson (New York, 1968), 234-45Google Scholar.
65 See Lettcrc, I, nos. 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 72, 76, 77, 81, 83, 89.
66 See Labalme, “Personalty and Politics,” 127.
67 Saxl, “Veritas,” 199 and n. 1.
68 The implements, almost certainly, are pruning hooks. Compare the (rather indistinct) pruning hook in a woodcut illustration of wine-making in Crescenzi, Pietro de, De agricultura vulgare (Venice, 1519), 75 Google Scholar and 234v; or the (all-too-distinct) example from the engraving of a Primaticcio drawing, “Nymph Mutilating a Satyr,” in Zerner, Henri, The School ofFontainebleau: Etchings and Engravings (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, “L.D.,”no. 15. A reader for this journal finds the posture of seated Truth reminiscent of parturition on the birth chair. It is an argument one can entertain. But her forward position on the rock is to permit room for Victory; rather than being spread, her right leg is raised; and the difficulty of a mature, disproportionately large satyr remains. The verb parit is from pario, “to bring forth, to bear”; but, the figurative sense of “produce, occasion, create” is primary in the motto. Both the Oxford Latin Dictionary and Lewis and Short cite Veritas odium parit as an instance of the figurative extension.
69 See Quondam, “Giardino,” 104-12, who describes an ambitious vision of an “egemonia culturale.”
70 Suggestively, the frontispiece to the first book of Aretino's Lettere (1538) portrays him open-mouthed. The portrait is enclosed by an elaborate architectural frame: on the left is the herm of a satyr; the herm of a nymph on the right. For reproductions, see Lettere sull ‘arte 3, pls. 22 and 27.
71 For satire as a weapon, see Juvenal, Satire 1, 165-67. The chain of relations implied by the image is neatly expressed in Alexander Pope's Juvenalian second Dialogue of his Epilogue to the Satires (1738): “O sacred Weapon! left for Truth's defence, / Sole Dread of Folly, Vice, and Insolence! / To all but Heav'n-directed hands deny'd, / The Muse may give thee, but the Gods must guide” (11. 212-15). I owe this reference to Howard Weinbrot.
72 See Plon, Maîtres, 4-6.
73 Saxl, “Veritas,” 201 and n. 4. See Quondam, “Giardino,” 107-08; and Gentili, Augusto, “Il problema delle immagini nell'attivita di Francesco Marcolini,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 157 (1980)Google Scholar: 116-25.
74 See Casali, Annali, nos. 88, 95, 97, 100; and Cecilia Ricottini Marsili-Libelli, Anton Francesco Doni: scrittore e stampatore (Biblioteca bibliografica italica [Florence, 1960]), nos. 34, 40, 41. For Doni's literary career, see Grendler, Critics, 49-65; and Quondam, “Giardino,” 99-104.
75 For the Moral Filosofia, see Casali, Annali, no. 92; Marsili-Libelli, Doni, no. 36. Graham Pollard has called to my attention the record of the die for a medal of Aretino being made in the House of Marcolini on 15 September 1551; but what this medal may have been we do not know. See G. Bottari, Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, scultura ed architettura, continued by S. Ticozzi, 8 vols. (Rome, 1822-25) 5:256.
76 On the Accademia Pellegrina, see Maylender, Michele, Storia delle accademie d'Italia (Bologna, 1929)Google Scholar 4:244-48; and Grendler, Critics, 58-63. For a thoughtful discussion of Doni's own mark (reused in some of the Marcolini-Doni collaborations) and related comments on Truth, see Gertrud Bing, “Nugae Circa Veritatem: Notes on Anton Francesco Doni, ”Journal of the Warburg Institute, 1 (1938): 304-12. Her conclusions, in conjunction with my own, suggest something like a dialogue on the nature of truth between Doni and Marcolini in the Pellegrina volumes, an activity wholly characteristic of the spirit of the Italian academies. For an incisive account of the academies, see Yates, Frances A., “The Italian Academies,” Renaissance and Reform: The Italian Contribution, Collected Essays (London, 1983)Google Scholar 2:6-29.
77 Lettere sull'arte 3:76 and pls. 17, 19. P. A. Gaetani's catalogue of Mazzuchelli's medal collection does illustrate both obverses and unbowdlerized reverses. See Museum Mazzuchellianum, seu numismata virorum doctrinapraestantium, 2 vols. (Venice, 1761-63) 1:292 and tab. LXIII, figs, v and viii.
78 Armand, Medailleurs 2:153, no. 12.
79 Lettere sull'arte, III, pis. 20 and 21. See also p. 235.
80 Lumbroso, Giacomo, Memorie italiane del buon tempo antico (Turin, 1889), 142 Google Scholar, first indicated the meaning, although misplacing the idea in scholastic tradition. For an account of this philosophic topos, seeR. B. Waddington, “ ‘All in All': Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, and the Soul-in-Body Topos,” English Literary Renaissance (forthcoming).
81 Lettere sull'arte 3:76-77 and nn. 414-15. Because the obscene reverse also occurs in combination with the obverse of a satyr head that has been identified (mistakenly, I believe) as Paolo Giovio, Gaetani also suggests that the medals result from an Aretino- Giovio quarrel (Museum Mazzuchellianum, 1:289, 292, and Tab. LXII, fig. iii). On the “Giovio” medal the reverse does not occur with the Totus in toto legend. Concerning these medals, see Waddington, , “Before Arcimboldo: Composite Portraits on Italian Medals,” The Medal 14 (spring, 1989): 12–23 Google Scholar.
82 Kaufmann, Noble Savage, 70. 83 Quoted from ibid.
84 See ibid., 65-81 and pis.; also, Millard Meiss, “Sleep in Venice. Ancient Myths and Renaissance Proclivities,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society n o (1966): 348-62.
85 Kaufrnann, Noble Savage, 71.
86 Through his letters, dedications, and public quarrels—not to mention the attacks by Franco and others —Aretino's love-life was an open book. Labalme argues that “in 1538 Aretino had escaped from a charge of blasphemy and possibly sodomy, both serious crimes in sixteenth-century Venice” (“Personality and Politics,” 124). Although focussed too early for Aretino, a useful background study is Ruggiero, Guido, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar.
87 The Letters of Pietro Aretino, trans. Thomas Caldecot Chubb (n.p., 1967), 124. For the original, see Lettere 1: no. 315.
88 Although satiric medals directed against institutions were common enough, only rarely do they seem to attack individuals. For examples of the former (anti-Papal and anti-Imperial), see Barnard, Francis Pierrepont, Satirical and Controversial Medals of the Reformation (Oxford, 1927)Google Scholar.
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