Henry Clay Frick acquired this painting in 1905, early in his career as a collector.
The sitter, the celebrated writer Pietro Aretino, had a legendary sharp tongue and was known as the “scourge of princes.” He was born in Arezzo, the son of a shoemaker. Little is known about his youth, other than that he studied in Perugia. In 1517, he arrived in Rome, where he joined the intellectual circle of Agostino Chigi, a powerful Sienese banker close to a number of artists, including Raphael.
Aretino made many enemies. One night in 1525, he was stabbed by a hired assassin and left for dead, after which he left Rome for good. He moved to Venice, which was known to be the most liberal Italian city, and there he became a close friend of Titian’s, who painted at least three portraits of him and included his effigy in at least another couple of larger works. Aretino was an unabashed self-promoter—through paintings, as well as engravings and medals, which he distributed as gifts to foreign heads of state and friends. One of these medals, by Alessandro Vittoria, is on display in the next gallery. The first portrait of Aretino by Titian was sent in 1527 to Federico II Gonzaga, the Marquess of Mantua, and is now in the Kunstmuseum in Basel. In 1545, Aretino sent to Cosimo I, Duke of Tuscany, another portrait of himself by Titian, which is now in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.
Apparently painted in three days, the portrait at the Frick was made for a common friend of Titian’s and Aretino’s, the publisher Francesco Marcolini. It is a token of friendship between a writer and his publisher.
Pietro Aretino
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. Clement VII made Aretino a Knight of Rhodes, and Julius III named him Knight of St. Peter. He was on intimate terms with Titian, who painted at least 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.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996
Perhaps Savelli family, Rome (1650). Chigi family, Rome (by 1692 and until 1905). Colnaghi, 1905. Knoedler. Frick, 1905.
Source: Paintings in The Frick Collection: French, Italian and Spanish. Volume II. New York: The Frick Collection, 1968.
