In 1543, Anton Francesco Doni visited Paolo Giovio's villa in Como. He subsequently wrote a letter to Pietro Bembo's godson, Agostino Landi, which included an ekphrastic description of a fresco in the villa depicting Mount Parnassus. Unlike Raphael's famous version, Giovio's Parnassus did not include ancient poets, and, with the exception of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, all the literary figures depicted were contemporaries. Central among them it is hardly surprising to find Pietro Bembo himself. By this stage Bembo's status as a writer and literaryfigure was canonical, almost to the point of deification among his followers. His name was often preceded by the epithet ‘il divino’, used also in reference to other cultural giants like Michelangelo. Bembo had figured prominently in several poetic descriptions of Parnassus, including those composed by Lodovico Dolce and Pietro Aretino. Yet his appearance in Giovio's fresco is novel in that, rather than an Apollo-like, resplendent figure, Doni specifies that Bembo is ‘vestito da cardinale’ (dressed as a cardinal), paired with his old friend from the court of Leo X, Jacopo Sadoleto, riding mules in the custom of churchmen. This visual pairing of Sadoleto and Bembo was to gain a certain currency, recurring in other fresco cycles, and evokes a particular moment in Pauline Rome in the years surrounding the convocation of the Council of Trent in 1545.