Aretino is most comical
of all in the expression of whining mendicancy, as in the 'Capitolo' to
Francis I; but the letters and poems made up of menaces and flattery
cannot, notwithstanding all that is ludicrous in them, be read without
the deepest disgust. A letter like that one of his written to
Michelangelo in November, 1545, is alone of its kind; along with all
the admiration he expresses for the 'Last Judgement' he charges him
with irreligion, indecency, and theft from the heirs of Julius II, and
adds in a conciliating postscript, 'I only want to show you that if you
are "divino," I am not "d'acqua." ' Aretino laid great stress upon it--
whether from the insanity of conceit or by way of caricaturing famous
men--that he himself should be called divine, as one of his flatterers
had already begun to do; and he certainly attained so much personal
celebrity that his house at Arezzo passed for one of the sights of the
place. There were indeed whole months during which he never ventured to
cross his threshold at Venice, lest he should fall in with some
incensed Florentine like the younger Strozzi. Nor did he escape the
cudgels and the daggers of his enemies, although they failed to have
the effect which Berni prophesied him in a famous sonnet. Aretino died
in his house, of apoplexy.
The differences he made in his modes of flattery are remarkable: in
dealing with non-Italians he was grossly fulsome; people like Duke
Cosimo of Florence he treated very differently.
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