Pietro Aretino

Pietro Aretino (20 April 1492 – 21 October 1556) was an Italian author, playwright, poet and satirist who wielded immense influence on contemporary art and politics and invented modern literate pornography. Born out of wedlock in Arezzo (Aretino, "from Arezzo"), very casually educated then banished from his native city, Aretino spent a formative decade in Perugia, before being sent, highly recommended, to Rome. There Agostino Chigi, the rich banker and patron of Raphael, took him under his wing. When Hanno the elephant, pet of Pope Leo X, died in 1516, Aretino penned a satirical pamphlet entitled "The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno." The fictitious will cleverly mocked the leading political and religious figures of Rome...