
This jovial Cardinal rose from humble origins in Tuscany to attach himself to one of the great Italian houses—the Medicis. And when Giovanni di Medici became Pope Leo X in 1513, the quick-witted cleric most commonly referred to as “Bibbiena” (after a Tuscan town) became the pontiff’s trusted advisor and confidante. His most famous work was decidedly secular: a prose comedy called “La Calandra”, whose bawdy, “glaringly immoral” passages scandalized colleagues and impressed other Italian writers of the time.