Abstract

In the late 1530s, the wide diffusion of print and the possibility of printing high-quality author portraits seemed to offer a monumentalizing stability for an author courting patrons-generating the kind of respect for a writer not available through either manuscript circulation or the strategic use of clothing. This chapter examines Aretino's discussions of clothing and gifts in his first volume of letters, to show that his exploitation of images, clothing, letters, and the printing press reveals an increasing awareness of the need for a single, fixed symbol as a means of self-representation. Rhetorically "unclothing" himself to reveal his "hidden self" unmasked, Aretino ultimately chose a phallus to symbolize his creative manliness and fictive autonomy from his very real patrons. This resolution of Aretino's image-making problems offers a strong explanation for the popularity of the personal emblem or impresa-a permanent but flexible sign of the subject's externalized "hidden self."

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