Chastening Pictures: Donne and Aretino

Yulia Ryzhik

n John Donne’s Satire IV of 1597, the speaker is accosted by a garrulous courtier, who reproaches him for keeping to himself and not recognizing “of Court life…the good”. Donne counters with a Isnide remark that there is nothing good to be learned at court: but Spartans’ fashion To teach by painting drunkards doth not taste Now; Aretine’s pictures have made few chaste; No more can princes’ Courts, though there be few Better pictures of vice, teach me virtue. (lines 68–72)1

The Spartans, according to Plutarch, used to make slaves drunk to show young men the disgusting effects of drunkenness and deter them from the habit – a method that Donne finds outmoded and ineffective. The incongruous reference to painting, which was not the Spartan practice, leads to a sharper, more current statement: “Aretine’s pictures have made few chaste”, with “few” as a sardonic understatement for “none”. Donne’s two examples make an odd pairing, which suggests that although nothing good can be gained from viewing the living pictures of vice at court, sexually explicit pictures, like filthy displays of drunkenness in ancient Sparta, could be used to teach virtue by counterexample, but are simply not potent enough for the modern world. Erotic images in Renaissance literature usually signify sexual self-indulgence and serve to stimulate, or at least to supplement, lust. In The Faerie Queene, tapestries of Venus and Adonis in the Castle Joyous of Malecasta (“badly chaste”) help “kindle

1. John Donne, The Major Works, ed. John Carey, Oxford 1990, p. 38.

539 yulia ryzhik donne and aretino lustfull fyres” in its courtiers (III.i.34–39). In Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist, Aretino’s reputation as a pornographer and caused later writers to credit Sir Epicure Mammon plans to decorate his pleasure room with erotic him with the images as well as the verses. “pictures as Tiberius took / From Elephantis, and dull Aretine / But Contemporary opinions on the poems and pictures varied. Giorgio coldly imitated” (II.ii.42–45).2 Yet Donne seems to imply that a viewer Vasari, who conflates the circulation of the engravings with that of the or reader might, in theory, have been chastened by “Aretine’s pictures”, sonnets, is outraged by the depictions of licentious acts. “What is worse”, and that these pictures were intended not to promote but to criticize vice, he fumes, “for each plate master Pietro Aretino composed a most indecent however insufficiently. My aim is to investigate how that is possible. sonnet, such that I do not know what was more offensive, the spectacle “Aretine’s pictures” is a shorthand for the infamous I modi, sixteen of Giulio’s drawings to the eye or the words of Aretino to the ear.”6 engravings of sexual ‘postures’ by Marcantonio Raimondi based on Ludovico Ariosto, who would later dub the poet “divine” Aretino and drawings by Giulio Romano. The engravings caused a furore at the call him “the scourge of princes” (“il flagello de’ principi”) in Orlando Roman court in 1524, but the papal reaction was severe: all existing copies furioso (XLVI.14), is kinder, and in the 1528 prologue to I suppositi refers were burned, and reprinting and distribution were prohibited on pain of to the pictures delicately as “pages [that are] beautiful rather than decent” death. Giulio had gone to Mantua by then, and remained unscathed by (“carte belle, più che oneste”).7 These reactions do not clarify, however, the scandal, but Marcantonio was thrown in jail.3 It was at this point that in what spirit Aretino composed the sonnets – or, more importantly for Pietro Aretino, already a notorious but well-connected satirist, allegedly my initial question, in what spirit Donne understood them. used his influence to secure from Pope Clement VII de’ Medici the It is possible that Donne would have seen a rough copy of I modi: crude release of Marcantonio.4 Afterwards, as Aretino recounts in a letter to imitations, accompanied by Aretino’s sonnets, were in circulation in the Battista Zatti, he wished to see the images that had led the censors to call sixteenth century, among them the only copy still extant.8 As Dennis Flynn for the artist’s crucifixion: “and having seen them, I was touched by the has demonstrated, Donne showed a remarkable familiarity with Aretino’s same spirit that moved Giulio Romano to draw them. And since poets works.9 In an early letter, Donne assures Sir Henry Wotton: “beleeve me[,] and sculptors both ancient and modern would sometimes, for their wits’ he is much lesse than his fame and was too well payd by the Roman church in amusement, write or sculpt lascivious things…I dashed off the sonnets that coyne which he coveted most[,] where his bookes were by the counsell which are to be seen below.”5 These sonnets, the Sonetti lussuriosi, sealed of Trent forbidden[,] which[,] if they had beene worne by all[,] long ere this

2. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A.C. Hamilton, Harlow and New York 2001; Ben Jonson, The Alchemist and Other Plays, ed. Gordon Campbell, Oxford 6. “[C]he fu peggio, a ciascun modo fece messer Pietro Aretino un disonestissimo 1995. sonetto, intantoché io non so qual fusse più o brutto lo spettacolo dei disegni di 3. Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture, Princeton Giulio all’occhio, o le parole dell’Aretino agl’orecchi”: Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ 1999, pp. 3–19, 230. più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori: nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna 4. I modi: The Sixteen Pleasures: An Erotic Album of the Italian Renaissance. Giulio Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, V, Florence 1966, p. 13. Romano, Marcantonio Raimondi, Pietro Aretino, and Count Jean-Frédéric-Maximilien de 7. See also Talvacchia (as in n. 3), pp. 55, 245 note. Waldeck, ed. and intr. Lynne Lawner, London 1988, pp. 9–10. 8. The current consensus that an edition of I modi with accompanying sonnets by 5. “[E] vistele, fui tocco da lo spirto che mosse Giulio Romano a disegnarle. E Aretino was printed in 1527 in Venice (to where Aretino repaired after the scandal) perché i poeti e gli scultori antichi e moderni sogliono scrivere e scolpire alcuna volta is called into question by James Grantham Turner, “I Modi and Aretino: I. The per trastullo de l’ingegno cose lascive…ci sciorinai sopra i Sonetti che ci si veggano ‘Toscanini Volume’ in Context”, The Book Collector, LIX, 2011, pp. 559–570. I am a i piedi”: Pietro Aretino, Lettere, in Edizione nazionale delle opere di Pietro Aretino, ed. grateful to Professor Turner for generously sharing his thoughts. Paolo Procaccioli, I, Rome 1997, p. 425. Unless otherwise indicated, translations 9. Dennis Flynn, “Familiar Letters: Donne and Aretino”, Renaissance Papers, 2002, in this essay are mine. pp. 27–43.

540 541 yulia ryzhik donne and aretino had been worne out.”10 Compared to the outraged reception by Aretino’s of “that infinite & precious treasure of Antiquitie”.13 Flynn argues that contemporaries, the coldness of Donne’s assessment is striking. Equally Donne takes a conventional view of Aretino here, as well as in Satire IV, striking is his perception that the motive behind Aretino’s pornographic emphasizing his fame as a pornographer, not as a man of letters.14 Yet the writings might have been other than libidinous. rejection of Aretino for being unoriginal and careless in his obscenities Donne’s refusal to be shocked chastens the sonnets, and by extension the seems to me, despite the perverse merit system of Hell, consistent with pictures, making them milder than their reputation has led us to expect. the opinions expressed in Donne’s letter and in Satire IV. In all three Donne scorns “Aretine’s pictures” on aesthetic, not on moral grounds. It instances Donne censures Aretino for not doing enough. is difficult to surmise what images Donne would have seen, and to judge The charge of insufficiency – an odd charge to level against a self- their quality based on one crude woodcut copy.11 Even so, once the initial professed man of excess – brings us closer, I think, to the ‘chastening’ shock subsides, we see that the postures are frank, but more grotesque value Donne found in “Aretine’s pictures”. Donne sensed, perhaps, than arousing, compared to, for instance, the softer illustrations created that the spirit that moved Giulio and Aretino to produce I modi and for Aretino’s sonnets by Paul Avril (1892). Likewise, for every exuberant the Sonetti lussuriosi was more subversive than merely lascivious. The expression of pleasure in the sonnets, there is an equal acknowledgment images and poems combine into a form of social criticism intended to that sex can be clumsy and ridiculous. In Sonnet XVI, the woman slips bait the authorities and to expose the hypocrisy and corruption of the off the bed onto a coffer (“Del letto mi ritruovo in su la cassa”) and papal court.15 Aretino’s defense of I modi is revealing in that respect. The complains about the uncomfortable position. In Sonnet XIV, it is the male organ, he argues, which has generated all of mankind, including the man’s turn to grumble: he balances painfully on all fours facing upward popes, emperors, and kings, is less offensive than the hands, which “wager as the woman tries to mount him backwards, all while positioned on a money, swear falsely, lend usuriously, make obscene gestures, tear, pull, wooden cart pulled by Cupid. The position is so strenuous (“disconcio”, punch, wound, and kill”, or the mouth, which “blasphemes, spits in the “a dissaggio”) that “a mule would keel over after an hour of it” (“ci face, gorges, swills, and vomits”.16 Explicit depictions of sexual acts are morrebbe a starci un’ora un mulo”).12 Despite these acrobatics, Donne meant, in part, to point out other, more serious vices. Aretino’s aim, in finds no “singularity” in Aretino except that his books are forbidden. other words, is satirical. Similarly, in Donne’s Ignatius His Conclave, Aretino is dismissed from Raymond Waddington argues persuasively that Aretino based his contention for the title of greatest innovator in Hell, on the grounds that association of sexual deviance with satire on the false but widely accepted in his “licentious pictures” he “had left out many things of that kind, etymological derivation of “satire” from “satyr”. The rough woodland with which the ancient histories & poëmes abound”, and that “hee creature with a voracious sexual appetite was also a savage railer against vice. had not onely not added any new invention” but had caused the loss That Aretino heartily accepted this dichotomy is evident in the medals he sent to important patrons, some of which featured his portrait on one side

10. Evelyn M. Simpson, A Study of the Prose Works of John Donne, Oxford 1948, 13. John Donne, Ignatius His Conclave, ed. and intr. Timothy S. Healy, Oxford pp. 316–317. 1969, pp. 65–67. 11. Turner (as in n. 8); James Grantham Turner, “Woodcut Copies of the Modi”, 14. Flynn (as in n. 9), p. 28. Print Quarterly, XXVI, 2009, pp. 116–117; James Grantham Turner, “I Modi and 15. I modi (as in n. 4), p. 34. Aretino: II. The ‘Toscanini Volume’ Re-examined”, The Book Collector, LIX, 2011, 16. ��“Le mani starieno bene ascose; perché esse giuocano i danari, giurano il falso, forthcoming. prestano a usura, fanno le fica, stracciano, tirano, danno de le pugna, feriscano, e 12. Pietro Aretino, I modi ed i sonetti lussuriosi. Secondo l’edizione clandestina stampata a amazzano. Che vi par de la bocca, che bestemia, sputa nel viso, divora, imbriaca, e Venezia nel 1527 / Giulio Romano, Pietro Aretino, ed. Riccardo Braglia, Mantua 2000. rece?”: Aretino (as in n. 5).

542 543 yulia ryzhik and a satyr on the other.17 The association of satire with satyrs took hold in England with the rise of formal satire in the 1590s. Aretino was initially known there as the scourge of princes, and was admired by Thomas Nashe. It is in personal attacks against Nashe that the emphasis shifted to Aretino’s reputation as a pornographer.18 Nashe, proudly posturing as the “English Aretine”, embraced that role as well, and included a distinct sexual undertone in his description of Aretino the satirist: “His pen was sharp-pointed like a poniard; no leaf he wrote on but was like a burning- glass to set on fire all his readers.”19 Donne, like Nashe, was unusual among English writers in seeking to integrate Aretino the satirist and Aretino the ribald. Although Donne himself enjoyed his share of railing and occasional ribaldry, his cautious and critical rendering of Aretino is a testament to his seriousness as a satirist and his belief in the capacity of Aretino’s chastened pictures to chasten human vices in their turn.

17. Raymond B. Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art, Toronto 2004, pp. 91–96, 115. See also Alvin Kernan, The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Renaissance, New Haven 1959, pp. 58–60. 18. See David C. McPherson, “Aretino and the Harvey–Nashe Quarrel”, PMLA, LXXXIV, 1969, pp. 1551–1558; and Saad El-Gabalawy, “Aretino’s Pornography and Renaissance Satire”, Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, XXX, 1976, pp. 87–99. 19. Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works, ed. J. B. Steane, Harmondsworth 1972, p. 309.

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