Titian’s Pietro Aretino

An essay by Xavier F. Salomon paired with a contribution by Francine Prose brings to life one of Titian’s most personal and revealing portraits. The author of lives of saints, scurrilous verses, comedies, tragedies, and innumerable letters, Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) attained considerable wealth and influence, in part through literary flattery and blackmail. Little is known of his early years, but by 1527 he had settled permanently in Venice. Among Aretino’s friends and patrons were some of the most prominent figures of his time, several of whom gave him gold chains such as the one he wears in this portrait. He was on intimate terms with Titian, who painted three portraits of him. Here the artist conveys his friend’s intellectual power through the keen, forceful head and his worldliness through the solid, weighty mass of the richly robed figure.

The Frick Diptych series is a series of books co-published by GILES with The Frick Collection, New York. Each volume in the series provides fresh insights into some of the Frick’s best known master works with an essay by an art historians paired with a contribution by a contemporary artists or writer.

Author biographies

Francine Prose is an award-winning author and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Xavier F. Salomon is Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator at The Frick Collection, NY

Table of Contents

1. Director’s Foreword
2. Acknowledgments
3. Apparations—Titian’s Portrait of Pietro Aretino by Francine Prose
4. Titian’s Pietro Aretino by Xavier F. Salomon
5. Bibliography
6. Index
7. Image Credits