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TIZIANO VECELLIO (TITIAN) (1498C.-1576) PORTRAIT OF PIETRO ARETINO Canvas, 33 1/2 inches by 39 inches

HALF-LENGTH, standing, facing to the right, face almost in profile. Wears a dark colored cloak with broad fur collar, covering a dress the sleeves of which are of a golden brown satin. Around his neck he wears a heavy chain of gold. His beard is long and streaked with gray.

Painted about 1548.

This intensely interesting figure of the Italian Renaissance was born in Arezzo, in 1492. In his early years he made a living in Perugia as a bookbinder, and picked up and education by reading the books he handled. Later he went to Rome and became a servant in the house of Chigi, the great banker. From the house of Chigi, Aretino passed into the Court of the worldly, high-living, extravagant Pope Leo X., becoming after Leo's death the intimate friend fo GIovanni de Medici. In 1527 Aretino was in Venice the city he loved, and there he lived for twenty-nine years a life of honor, splendor and fame. Titian was one of his intimate table companions, and his great friendship for the artist, says Vasari, who knew them both was of the greatest advantage, because he made him known far and wide where his pen reached and especially to princes of importance. In Venice Aretino greatly increased his literary reputation, his work comprising such a wide range as poetry, tragedy, comedy, letters, pornographic and religious writings. He praised the virtues of princes who paid him not to denounce their vices, and it is suggested that when Charles V. paid Aretino more than he paid Titian, he knew what he was about in subsiding a rising power, the power of the press. Justly was he called the "Scourge of princes."

Aretino died in 1556, Titian surviving him twenty years.

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