Aretino at Home

Abstract

This chapter investigates how the Italian author Pietro Aretino (1492-1556) forged his private life into an instrument of self-fashioning. It concentrates on the two Venetian homes the author arranged for his personal life, and examines how over the years these spaces were turned into dwellings to be used for private occasions, for inner circle gatherings, and for public appearances, both in real life and in the semi-realistic / semi-fictional self-presentation of his Letters. Based on the extant documentation on the lay-out and decoration of these apartments, as well as on the surviving reports by visitors, the chapter considers these spaces as conscious and well-targeted instances of Aretino's constant policy to project an image of his private person that was both in opposition to and in compliance with the dominant models he was keen on to compete with and surpass. In doing so the chapter particularly examines the correspondence - positive and negative - with the Bembo template as it was established in the late 1520s in nearby Padua and its countryside, that arguably inspired Aretino to construct a profoundly alternative attitude towards the designing and presentation of his private and public life as a man of letters.