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Pasquinade refers to an anonymous lampoon, whether in verse[1] or in prose. Pasquin (Italian Pasquino, Latin Pasquillus) was the name ordinary Romans gave to a battered ancient statue (from a Hellenistic-style group, probably of the 3rd century BC) dug up in the course of paving the Parione district and erected at the corner of Piazza di Pasquino and Palazzo Braschi, on the west side of Piazza Navona in 1501,[2] by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, who inadvertently gave the statue its first voice, by originating an annual ceremony, the first in 1501, for Saint Mark's Day, April 25. The marble torso was draped in a toga, and epigrams in Latin were attached to it. The decorous event quickly got out of hand when it became the custom for those who wanted to criticize the pope or individuals in his government—for a pasquinade is first and foremost a personal attack— to write satirical poems in broad Roman dialect (called "pasquinades" from the Italian "pasquinate") and attach them to this statue. Thus Pasquino became the first talking statue of Rome.[3] He spoke out about the people's dissatisfaction, he denounced injustice, and he assaulted misgovernment by members of the Church. Who this "Pasquino" was remains obscure. By the mid-sixteenth century it was reported that the original Pasquino was a tailor in whose premises not far away speech tended to be quite free; after his death it became more circumspect to attribute critical witticisms to the statue. The report in 1509 of an original littérateur and master of festivities, "Pasquino Pasquillove" by name,[4] may be a disarming ludibrium itself.
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