Marcantonio e il ritratto inciso di ‘Pietro Aretino poeta famosissimo’

The Portrait of Pietro Aretino engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi is a crucial occurrence in the biographies of both the artist and the writer. For instance, Marcantonio huge catalog of engravings rarely feature portraits. While regarding Pietro, the portrait is an early example of his strategy to promote himself as a writer through arts. Despite the extensive bibliography on the subject, many doubts remain about the realization of this engraved portrait. The date of its execution, for example, is uncertain and even the identity of the author of the painted portrait, who served as a model for the engraving, is often questioned. Although the lack of documents does not allow us to find a definitive answer to these matters, the aim of this study is to reexamine the hypotheses suggested by critics on order to highlight the most convincing ones, on both historical and stylistic bases.