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In 1545, the Venice-based writer Pietro Aretino wrote to the charlatan Iacopo Coppa, who had been praising Aretino's work as he sold it in the piazza at Ferrara. In contrast to some who disparaged the showmanship and mendacious prattle of street performers, Aretino claimed to be delighted that his work and reputation were being disseminated in this manner, 'in the mouths of charlatans'. 1 The power of the charlatan to pull in an audience and to convince them of the merit of his wares was unrivalled:r est_670 638..653Who is so busy, so needy, or so stingy, [asked Aretino] that at the first touch of [the performer's] lira, at the first sound of their voice, at the first advertisement of their merchandise, he would not stop himself, not engage himself, and not throw himself into buying the remedies, the little jars [full of unguents or perfumes], and the stories, that they give by sale even to anyone who is certain that they are worth nothing, that they matter nothing, and that they say nothing? 2

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Street singers were crucial figures in Italian Renaissance urban culture, mediating between printed, written and oral forms of communication. Performing in the central piazza, they offered entertainment, news, satire and commentary on current events to heterogeneous publics. But as the communicative capacities of the singers reached their peak, increasingly their presence in the city was seen as threatening and disruptive. The struggle for control of the piazza became particularly bitter in the later sixteenth century, when civic and ecclesiastical authorities strove to render public urban spaces more orderly and magnificent and to police the borders between sacred and profane spaces, times and ideas.