Aretino: Conjuring the Sensuous City

This article examines Pietro Aretino's promotion and critique of the sensorial aspects of the physical, the political and the sociable city through a selection of his letters and the three comedies La Cortigiana, Il Marescalco and La Talanta. It explores the shared physical and social experiences that Aretino counts on in order for his words to resonate with his readers, especially with regard to Venice and Rome, viewed at times through the lens of Venice. Aretino lives during a time of intense sensorial concerns, from the imitation of nature promoted in works of art to the regulation of the urban sensorium through the control of speech and print, sumptuary laws and public performance. Drawing upon his own early experience of painting, writing poetry and perhaps street performance, Aretino evokes those concerns and displays a particularly urban sensibility as he seizes the opportunities offered by printing and the expansion of vernacular texts to explore what it is to inhabit the early modern Italian city in all its jumbly, chaotic and colourful sensorial ‘noise’.