ABSTRACT
This chapter explains contextualize popular poetic works about the Sack within the Italian Wars and then look specifically at the case of Eustachio Celebrino's La presa di Roma, the most enduringly printed work on the subject. The hottest years of the Italian Wars the decades between 1500 and 1530 therefore witnessed the greatest surge of new works in the poemetto's brief tradition. Working at the junction of print, pen, and performance, Eustachio Celebrino is a fascinating figure in the world of Cinquecento written and oral culture whose contributions are nevertheless frequently overlooked due to their commercial appeal. A poemetto bellico on the most momentous battle of the Italian Wars would have been an obvious choice for a man who had illustrated a number of chivalric works and now hoped to attract a broad audience of his own, and thus the most successful of his publications was La presa di Roma.
