Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) wrote and published in an era in which a highly developed erotic code was adopted by dozens and dozens of writers in Italy, and presumably understood by tens of thousands of readers in Europe. A most helpful text for decoding the erotic lexicon was written by Jean Toscan: Le carnaval du langage: le lexique érotique des poètes de l’équivoque de Burchiello à Marino (XVe-XVIIe siècles), Lille, Presses Universitaires, 1981; thesis 1978, 4 vols.

The text was transcribed from Motti inediti e sconosciuti di M. Pietro Bembo edited and annotated by Vittorio Cian (Venice, I. Merlo, 1888)