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If it is beauty and joy we find in the Bella, it is a profound force and confidence that we come upon in the portrait of Aretino painted before 1545, and life above all. Here is one of the greatest blackguards of history, the "Scourge of Princes," the blackmailer of Popes, the sensualist of the Sonnetti Lussuriosi, the witty author of the Ragionamenti.
This letter may be compared with others of about the same date. In one (Aug. 3, 1514) he says: 'Ho lasciato dunque i pensieri delle cose grandi e gravi, non mi diletta più leggere le cose antiche, nè ragionare delle moderne; tutte si son converse in ragionamenti dolci, etc. Again he writes (Dec. 4, 1514): 'Quod autem ad me pertinet, si quid agam scire cupis, omnem meae vitae rationem ab eodem Tafano intelliges, quam sordidam ingloriamque, non sine indignatione, si me ut soles amas, cognosces. Later on, we may notice the same language. Thus (Feb. 5, 1515), 'Sono diventato inutile a me, a' parenti ed agli amici, and (June 8, 1517) 'Essendomi io ridotto a stare in villa per le avversit
The mode of life, the morals and the philosophy of the public women, who with all their sensuality and greed were not always incapable of deeper passions, as well as the hypocrisy and devilish malice shown by some in their later years, are best set forth by Giraldi, in the novels which form the introduction to the 'Hecatommithi. Pietro Aretino, in his 'Ragionamenti, gives us rather a picture of his own depraved character than of this unhappy class of women as they really were.
Aretino put his name to all he wrote, and openly gloried in his notorious 'Ragionamenti. His literary talent, his clear and sparkling style, his varied observation of men and things, would have made him a considerable writer under any circumstances, destitute as he was of the power of conceiving a genuine work of art, such as a true dramatic comedy; and to the coarsest as well as the most refined malice he added a grotesque wit so brilliant that in some cases it does not fall short of that of Rabelais.
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