Stanze di M. Pietro Aretino

Pietro Aretino

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rosand and Muraro (1976, pp. 191; 194-45, no. 42), plausibly attribute the cutting to Britto, who produced another woodcut for Marcolini in1536 and is known to have had associations with both Titian and Aretino. In 1550 for example he produced a woodcut based on a self-portrait by Titian and persuaded Aretino to write a sonnet praising the woodcut. The woodcut perfectly illustrates the conceit of the poem, depicting the poet Aretino as a rustic shepherd, singing to his love, Angela Sirena, who appears as a winged siren in the heavens. These poems of praise were not well received by the husband and family of the woman Aretino admired. Her death in 1540 has been attributed to the troubles she experienced after being singled out in this way by the notorious Aretino.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art