Pietro Aretino: Orator and Art Theorist

In his own day, the notorious "Scourge of Princes," Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), was recognized as an authority on the arts. The versatile writer was the intimate friend of such prominent artists as Raphael, Titian, and Jacopo Sansovino. He advised patrons, commissioned an extraordina range of portraits that bore his features, and assembled an art collection of his own. Although he never wrote a treatise on either poetry or painting, Aretino published hundreds of letters dealing with the fine arts. Twentieth-century art historians have long acknow ledged Aretino's importance in the world of Cinquecento art. Nevertheless, scholars have produced only one fu ll- scale study about the writer, and that in Italian: a criti cal edition of his 683 letters on art. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate that Aretino's importance lay not in any single aspect of his work, but in the range.