knaves that ever God made" of Nashe (The Unfortunate Traveller) to "that notorious ribald of Arezzo" of Milton's Areopagitica. The English traveller Sir John Reresby visited "the obscene profane poet" Aretino's grave in the church of San Luca, Venice, in the mid-1650s. He relates that the following epitaph had been removed by the inquisitors: This he translates as "Here Aretin, the Tuscan poet, lies, who all the world abused but God, and why? he said he knew him not." The tomb at the church now no longer exists, since the church was demolished. Pietro's first biographer states that there was no epitaph on the tomb. Those who claim that there was a sarcastic epitaph in hendecasyllables suspect that it should be attributed to Bishop Paolo Giovio, and that it was composed when Aretino was still alive: In 2007, the composer Michael Nyman set some of Aretino's to music under the title 8 Lust Songs. Once again, Aretino's texts proved controversial: at a 2008 performance at Cadogan Hall, London, the printed programs were withdrawn following allegations of obscenity. Works Poetry (1526). Erotically explicit sonnets written to accompany Marcantonio Raimondi's engravings of Giulio Romano's drawings of sexual positions in . (1526). A series of questions and answers on erotic matters, expressed as poems in and quatrains. (1527-; published 1532, 1535) (published 1536) (published 1540) (published ) Prose (also called ) (1534, 1536). A pair of Renaissance dialogues. In the Dialogue of Nanna and Antonia under a Fig Tree in Rome (1534), the two women discuss the life options open to Nanna's daughter, Pippa, to become a nun, a wife or a whore. In the follow-up Dialogue in which Nanna Teaches her Daughter Pippa (1536), the relations between prostitutes and their clients are discussed. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal as Aretino's Dialogues (New York: Stein and Day, 1972). The second dialogue is also translated by Rosa Maria Falvo, Alessandro Gallenzi, and Rebecca Skipwith as The School of Whoredom (London: Hesperus Press Limited, 2003). Plays (1525, 1534). Comedy in five acts, a parody of the then-unpublished by Baldassare Castiglione. First performance possibly in carnival 1525. A revised version was published in Venice in 1534. (1533). Comedy in five acts. The play served as a source for Malipiero's opera of the same name (Treviso, 1969). (1542). Comedy in five acts. (1542). Comedy in five acts. (1546). Comedy in five acts. (1546). Tragedy in verse. Notes References