Giovanni Mazzaferro. Hand-drawn Portraits in Giorgio Vasari's 'Lives': New Discoveries. Part Two

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Giovanni Mazzaferro
Hand-drawn Portraits in Giorgio Vasari's Lives:
New Discoveries

Part Two

Figure 17) Presumed Self-portrait of Correggio (also called Self-portrait of Lord Lee).
Source: http://www.fondazioneilcorreggio.it/portfolio/ritratto-di-gentiluomo/

Other contributions on Giorgio Vasari in this blog

Read Part One

5. The “True” Portrait of Correggio

The absence of the portrait of Correggio has been seen, in the course of history, as the most significant one among the eight missing images in the Lives. Vasari wrote at the end of the biography dedicated to Antonio Allegri: "I used all diligence to get his portrait; and because he did not produce any self-portrait, and others have never portrayed him, because he always lived in a very retired way, I could not find it" [28].  As known, the opinion expressed by Vasari on Correggio was controversial. His general approach was no doubt positive, especially if one takes into account that he was a Lombard artist; certainly, Vasari made clear the caveat that, if Correggio had only made one journey to Rome (on the alleged artist's trip to Rome it was discussed for centuries), he would have performed much better.

While Vasari’s overall assessment towards the artist was positive, he would have never imagined what indeed happened by the end of the century. Correggio rose to one of the very great Italian artists, comparable only to Raphael, and for many even better than Leonardo and Michelangelo. That judgment, in essence, was reiterated in an unchanged way for at least two centuries. Now, imagine what would happen if the face of Raphael had remained unknown. This would have led to a race to trace his true effigies and, in the absence of reliable data, illustrations of all sorts would have been produced. Very often they would have been sheer invented portraits, or often "idealized" portraits. That is exactly what happened in the case of Correggio. Riccardo Finzi, in his monograph Le sembianze del Correggio (The appearance of Correggio) [29] published or quoted several dozens of them, concluding that, in his opinion, the face painted in the so-called Self-portrait of Lord Lee (named after its rediscoverer, in 1927) would be precisely his self-portrait [30]. You can see it here above. 

5.1 The portrait of Correggio in a Giuntina specimen preserved at the Worcester College in Oxford, UK.

That said, it is not my intention to review all the "real" portraits of Correggio. I will confine myself to portraits drawn or pasted on the Lives [31].  I found four of them in the copies which I have examined. The first is a Giuntina specimen which belonged to (and was richly annotated by) the English architect Inigo Jones (1573-1652). The annotations have been published by Anthony W. Johnson in 1997 [32]. Johnson, while not publishing it, indicated the presence (in the correspondence of the medallion dedicated to Correggio) of a " ink drawing of the painter, nicely executed by Jones in the space provided" [33]. The specimen in question is located in Oxford, at the Worcester College, which kindly gave me permission to show the picture [34]. Here it is:

Figure 18) Portrait of Correggio in a specimen at the Worcester College annotated by Inigo Jones
© The Provost and Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford, UK

To tell the truth, this portrait - a portrait of a man with a hooked nose, severely receding hairline, bushy beard in a seemingly emaciated face - is all but unknown. It was used by Carlo Manolessi in 1647 at the time of publishing the third edition of the Lives (the first after the death of Vasari). As mentioned, Manolessi filled two of ovals which had been left empty by the Arezzo-born painter: that of Cavallini and that of Correggio.

Figure 19) Vasari's Lives. Manolessi edition (Bologna, 1647) Portrait of Correggio (Vol. II p. 22)
Source: https://archive.org/details/gri_33125011256746

We know that Jones travelled to Italy twice, respectively in 1604 and in 1614. According to Johnson, his annotations were produced roughly in these two occasions. How to reconcile these facts with the undeniable sameness of the two portraits? Logic dictates that the assumptions are threefold:

• Jones and Manolessi must have had access to an identical model, and copied it in detail (Manolessi did it decades later);
• Manolessi must have copied it from Jones (but it is not clear whether he could have seen the original drawing by the English architect);
• after 1647 Jones (or someone after him - remember that Jones died in 1654 -) must have got a copy of the Lives edited by Manolessi and copied that portrait in his Giuntina specimen.

Frankly speaking, we must recognize that the most likely hypothesis seems to be the third one and there is a real possibility not only that the portrait was designed four decades after the annotations, but also that it was not made by Jones. This teaches us that we should always distinguish (in a precautionary way) any considerations on the property of a book and the authenticity of a drawing contained in it. 

5.2 The portrait of Correggio (and Raffaellino from Reggio) in a Giuntina specimen at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA.

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign keeps one sample (marked 927 V44v 1568) of the Giuntina edition of the Lives displaying a portrait of Correggio [35]. The specimen is part of the Cavagna collection. Antonio Cavagna Sangiuliani (1843-1917), an amazing scholar and bibliophile, gathered an impressive collection of books (85 thousands volumes) at his home in Bereguardo (Pavia). It was purchased in bulk by the University of Illinois in 1920.

The portrait was not drawn by hand, but it was a print, cut out and pasted at the oval left blank. The face that is portrayed there is certainly not new to us.

Figure 20) Portrait of Correggio in an exemplary of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
© University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA

This is the same Correggio we have already seen in the Manolessi edition of the Lives and in the annotated version by Inigo Jones, with one important difference. The pseudo-Correggio was portrayed in the opposite direction to the already seen examples. The disproportion between the artist's face and the shrine containing it immediately signals that the portrait was actually not meant to be pasted in the Lives, but originally had an autonomous function. In The appearance of Correggio Riccardo Finzi wrote: "In his day, the image of Dozza [editor's note: the publisher of the version edited by Manolessi and published in 1647] went almost unnoticed. However, the Reggio-based Bernardino Curti remade the portrait giving to the face a manly vigour" [36]. If it was really Curti to reinterpret the portrait of Correggio [37], he did before 1679, the year of his death.

The incision speaks for itself. 

Figure 21) Curti Bernardino. Portrait of Correggio (seventeenth century)
published in Riccardo Finzi, The appearance of Correggio ... quoted; Fig. 46.

The engraving on the specimen in Illinois is the one by Curti, cropped and deprived of the external writing Antonius de Coriggio omnium pictorum princeps (Antonio from Correggio, prince of all painters).

Something should be however added with regard to this copy of the Lives. It included a few anonymous glosses [38], almost all concentrated in the Life of Correggio, but above all it also displayed a second cut and pasted portrait. This time, it was an artist for which the work of Vasari did not provide for a picture: Raffaele Motta (1550-1578), or Raffaellino from Reggio if you prefer, the star of a short season of Roman Mannerism. Raffaellino’s image was inserted in the third volume (where it was expected to be placed, chronologically) at the end of the letter of Giovanbattista Adriani. 

Figure 22) Portrait of Raffaellino from Reggio in an exemplary at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
© University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA

I'm honestly not in a position to say whether also the engraving by Motta was produced by Bernardino Curti. However, it is worth taking note of a few things about it. If one considers that Correggio’s portrait too was originally surrounded by a statement specifying the name of the portrayed; if one considers that the background of the oval had the same, identical, distribution of light and dark and the same type of processing to create a "niche" effect, one would assume that the hand must have been the same. In any case, it is just obvious that those who owned the specimen preserved today at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign was most likely based in Reggio Emilia, or that, at least, he was very interested in the artists born in that city. Perhaps the owner was (but it's just a fanciful hypothesis) the same Bernardino Curti.

5.3 The portrait of Correggio in a Torrentiniana specimen at the National Central Library of Rome.

The Torrentiniana edition marked 71.5 A 2 and kept at the National Library in Rome is one of the most interesting I've ever seen; I am planning to write further about it in more detail in the future [39]. First of all, it must be said that it is an incomplete version, as only the second volume has been retained; in this second volume we are missing the title page and the text starts directly from p. 555 with the Introduction of the Third part of the Lives. But the most interesting thing is that the volume, as it appears today, was probably the result of very early plans (probably before the publication of the Giuntina in 1568) to transform it into an "illustrated" edition and to merge it, specifically, with a very particular book, entitled Le sorti di Francesco Marcolini da Forlì (The fates by Francesco Marcolini from Forli) [40]. I do not know whether this was planned only for the second or even for the first volume; however, in the second book (including the back covers) were pasted throughout the book seventeen woodcuts cartoons clipped from Le Sorti, released ten years earlier (in 1540) and then republished in 1550 (the year of publication of the Torrentiniana). Given that the work also contains hand-written annotations of a (unknown to me) "Gio: Antonio Zuccardini Ferrarese Painter 1562" it came to my mind - as I said - that this was an intentional operation carried out before he left the second edition of the Lives.

The specimen, as regards the argument that I'm dealing with, however, also displayed a much later portrait of Correggio. The drawing was glued only on the right side of p. 581 (the one in which begins the biography of the painter), so that you can see it both on the front (where, in addition to the portrait of the artist, we can read the words "Ant: from Correggio Painter 1512") and on the back, on which it was written "Drawn by Maurizio Sansiri from Correggio in the Year 1675" [41].

Figure 23) Portrait of Correggio in the 71.5 A 2 exemplary of the National Central Library of Rome
© Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma. No further reproduction of this image is allowed.

It is needless to say, once again, that the face is well known to us and corresponds to all already displayed portraits, ultimately traceable to the Manolessi edition of 1647. One may wonder, if anything, what the sense of the back label is, since the third edition of the Lives had already made the disguise available to the public. It seems clear that that indication (starting from the fact that the author - a Maurizio Sansiri unknown to me and to the repertoires - would have been a native of Correggio) served to support the claim (probably to the detriment of a bit naive collector) that this was really the artist's face, and that it was proposed for the first time in history by way of an important discovery.

5.4. The portrait of Correggio in the specimen 29.E.4-6 of the Corsiniana Library of Rome.

In the Giuntina specimen 29.E.4-6, annotated by Annibale Mancini (see par. 3), also appeared a portrait of Antonio da Correggio.

Figure 24) Portrait of Correggio in the sample 29.E.4-6 of the Corsiniana Library of Rome. As you can see, the picture is not included, as unfortunately I did not get the relevant permission to publish it in low resolution by the Corsiniana Library of Rome (which I am therefore not able to thank). This was the textual motivation of the refusal: "... we cannot accommodate your request. As you can see on the form that you filled out (see p. 2), the license to use low-resolution images on the web for one (1) year is subject to the condition that the images cannot be downloaded. The images on your blog are available for download, as we could check. I must therefore confirm that your request to be supplied images cannot be agreed." While the regulation has been saved, common sense has not. To see the image, it is sufficient to consult Carlo Maria Simonetti, La vita delle Vite vasariane ... quoted., p. 160.

It was a human type that - as I understand - had no equal in the other portraits referred to the literature. The face is that of a man who was abundantly elder than the 40 years reported by Vasari as the expected age of death, with mild eyes, melancholy air, a thick beard and a ceremonial dress. It could very well be a scholar belonging to one of the many Italian courts.

Why did this portrait have no success? One could answer: because it was not known to anyone. It is not so. The specimen was at the Corsiniana library. Giovanni Gaetano Bottari was librarian there in the mid-eighteenth century. He published in 1759 the fourth edition of the Lives [42], the first annotated and especially the first in which appeared all the portraits of the artists, including the eight left empty by Vasari in 1568. Six of the eight faces were taken literally from the pictures appearing in the Mancini specimen. They were those of Giovanni da Ponte, Berna from Siena, Duccio, Taddeo di Bartolo, Torrigiano and Marco Calavrese. By way of example, I am attaching hereafter a portrait of Giovanni da Ponte published by Bottari.

Figure 25) Giorgio Vasari, Lives in the Bottari edition (1759). Detail of the portrait of Giovanni da Ponte.

Please compare this with the figure 4). The two images are identical. Bottari therefore knew the Mancini exemplary and used it to derive six of the eight missing portraits. In two cases he refrained from doing it. The first was Pietro Cavallini, for which he used the portrait published by Manolessi in the third edition of his Lives (the 1659 one, mentioned above) and the second was Correggio, for whom he did use neither the portrait of the Mancini specimen (fig. 24) nor the one published by Manolessi (fig. 19). Why? The answer is cryptic in the Notes to the text (on p. 31, n. 1: "The portrait of Correggio was found afterwards, and reported here"), but more detailed in the Extension to the notes of the second tome (down the volume, with new numbers in Roman numerals): "We have taken the portrait of this painter, which Vasari was not able to find, from a good engraved printing by A. Belluzzi, dedicated to Father Sebastiano Resta of the New Church of Rome by Giovan Francesco Bugatto from Milan, and a fellow citizen of said Father" (p. 3). According to Resta’s handwritten notes, this engraving would have been made in 1691.

Thus, for Bottari, a first rate antiquarian and scholar, the "true" picture of Correggio was the one etched by Bugatti on an invention by Belluzzi (see Fig. 26. Note that Bottari was wrong and reversed by mistake the names of the engraver and the inventor): you see there a bald man with an aquiline nose, in seemingly religious clothes, holding in a hand a picture of his Madonna del Latte. Anything but a man being around forty years old. 

Figure 26) Portrait of Correggio. Engraving by Giovanni Francesco Bugatti on an invention by Ambrogio Besozzi.
Brescia, Civic Museums of Art and History, Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo.
Source: http://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/stampe/schede/D0080-08739/

Corrado Ricci [43], in 1917, traced the iconographic source from which Besozzi drew the picture. It was a detail of a fresco by Lattanzio Gambara at the Parma Cathedral where, "immediately to the left [editor's note: of the main door], we see a figure of an elderly man of about sixty years, a bit bald, a bit wrinkled, with an aquiline nose and dark, not very long beard" (see fig. 27).

Figure 27) Picture of the alleged portrait of Correggio in the article by Corrado Ricci
on 'Rassegna d'arte antica e moderna', 1917, issue 3/4, p. 61.

UPDATING 10 November 2017. For a new hand-drawn portrait of Correggio see A 'new' Portrait of Correggio in a Specimen of Vasari's Lives to be auctioned at Sotheby's. 

5.5. For a chronology of Correggio’s portraits

A closer inspection of the very last image proposed by Ricci encourages me to argue a hypothesis. Gambara’s fresco might have been not only the source of inspiration for Bugatti’s engraving, but also for the portrait of the Manolessi edition, which we have already met here in the specimens in Oxford, in Illinois and the National Library of Rome. If we take the face painted by Gambara around 1570 and we rotate it counter-clockwise by 90 degrees, we get a highly balding man with a long beard, an emaciated face and the same, unmistakable aquiline nose. No source (let alone Vasari, who expressly wrote that he knew nothing) had an indication that the artist from Correggio had a so pronounced nose. Is it possible that Manolessi and Bugatti reached the same result by coincidence? In my opinion, it is not. It is therefore realistic, in my view, to draw the following timeline (at least with regard to Correggio portraits with the aquiline nose): Manolessi or whoever else picked up in 1647 a tradition that Lattanzio Gambara had painted the portrait of Antonio Allegri in the Parma Cathedral. He reproduced it in the third edition of the Lives. This reproduction (in contrast to what Finzi wrote) opened a fortunate track in the artist's representation. The success was testified, first, by the specimen of the Lives which belonged to Inigo Jones, second, by the fact that Bernardino Curti engraved the same image between 1647 and 1679, although with a different direction (see also the specimen at the University of Illinois) and, finally, that in 1675 a drawing was made, attributing its authorship to an inhabitant of Correggio. Towards the end of the seventeenth century (in 1691, according to Father Resta, on whose reliability one cannot bet blindly) Ambrogio Besozzi "invented" a different version either from the Manolessi version or (more likely) from the original in Parma, and commissioned Giovanni Francesco Bugatti to engrave it. Here Correggio got again a portrait in profile, with almost a priestly air. This image had success, and was in line with the idea of a materially poor Correggio, who was however rich in virtue; it was the same image supported (among others) also by Father Resta. In the mid-1700s, when Bottari included it in his fourth edition of the Lives, it became the "true" portrait of Correggio. Indeed, the hand-drawn portraits that we have seen testify therefore what probably was the prevailing attributed face to the artist for at least thirty years after the publication of Vasari's edition by Manolessi (1647).

6. A special case: the medallions designed in the Giuntina specimen at the Malatesta Library in Cesena

The Malatesta Library in Cesena retains a specimen of the Giuntina (marked NORI C 0241-3) in which all eight ovals left empty by Vasari are designed by Dionigi di Tommaso Malenotti [44]. The authenticity is certain. One might even say that there was a primary desire to make known who designed the ovals. Malenotti’s name is mentioned on several occasions, last but not least in a drawn cartouche in the bottom of the third volume, lower than the woodcut of the Fame illuminating the arts.

Figure 28) Back page of the third volume of Vasari's Lives in the sample NORI C 0241-3
of the Malatesta Library in Cesena © Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena

It reads "Dionigi di Tomaso Malenotti. Firenze 1586". The first of the left white oval is, as noted, that of Pietro Cavallini. Here one can see a portrait, which, at first glance, might seem a (not successful) attempt to reproduce the artist's effigy.

Figure 29) Oval of Pietro Cavallini in the first volume of Vasari's Lives
(NORI exemplary C 0241-3 of the Malatesta Library in Cesena) © Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena

However, all subsequent ovals are variants of the same coat of arms, which would, or would intend to be, the emblem of the Malenottis or even representations of Florentine symbols. Unfortunately, not all designs are easily readable. In some cases the ink is very washed out, so as to make difficult the identification. Let us see them, starting with the coats of arms:

Figure 30) Oval of Berna of Siena in the first volume of Vasari's Lives
(NORI exemplary C 0241-3 of the Malatesta Library in Cesena) © Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena

Figure 31) Oval by Giovanni da Ponte of the first volume of Vasari's Lives
(NORI exemplary C 0241-3 of the Malatesta of Cesena Library) © Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena

Figure 32) Oval of Antonio da Correggio in the second volume of Vasari's Lives
(NORI exemplary C 0241-3 of the Malatesta Library in Cesena) © Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena

Figure 33) Oval of Torrigiano in the second volume of Vasari's Lives
(NORI exemplary C 0241-3 of the Malatesta Library in Cesena) © Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena

Figure 34) Oval of Marco Calavrese in the second volume of Vasari's Lives
(NORI exemplary C 0241-3 of the Malatesta Library in Cesena) © Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena

In the oval of Duccio one can glimpse the apical part of a dome with a lantern that is clearly the dome of the Florence Cathedral.

Figure 35) Oval iof Duccio n the first volume of Vasari's Lives
(NORI exemplary C 0241-3 of the Malatesta Library in Cesena) © Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena

And finally in Taddeo Bartoli’s medallion one can guess that a coat of arms with six balls was shown, which is obviously a Medici coat of arms. 

Figure 36) Oval of Taddeo di Bartolo in the first volume of Vasari's Lives
(NORI exemplary C 0241-3 of the Malatesta Library in Cesena) © Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena

Malenotti, however, did not just fill in the empty medallions, but often added decorations to the already printed shrines. See, by way of example, the image of Pontormo, in which some smoke exits from the lamps at the top; it was added in pen by the drawer [45].

Figure 37) Oval of Pontormo in the second volume of Vasari's Lives
(NORI exemplary C 0241-3 of the Malatesta Library in Cesena) © Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena

Sometimes, Malenotti’s interventions were dated. We learn that they covered a time span ranging from 1586 to 1590.

But so far I have deliberately evaded a question. Who was Dionigi di Tomaso Malenotti? Unfortunately, nobody knows. In fact, the Malenotti surname was widely widespread at that time, especially in the Siena area, but this Dionigi was keen to be identified as a Florentine. A suggestive hypothesis coming to my mind is that Dionigi might be in some way related with Sebastiano (or Bastiano) Malenotti, an assistant of Michelangelo Buonarroti for several years. However, there is no evidence about it. The facts are that Dionigi was not enrolled at the Academy of Design in Florence; instead a Dionigi Malenotti was cited in 1786 by Placido Landini as a member of the Confraternity of Our Lady of Mercy [46]; and, above all, in an unpublished manuscript of the Empoli-born canon Ercole Vittorio Figlinesi (previous to 1756), at no. 540 is cited Dionigi di Tomaso Malenotti with origin in Empoli: "January 1580, Dionigi di Tomaso Malenotti, a leather tanner in Florence" [47]. The indication that Malenotti was a leather tanner should not discourage us: tanners were working in the realm of engraving and decorating skin and their job can be traced in some way to the art of drawing. Rather, one has to think that he must have been a wealthy craftsman, taking into account that he owned a copy of the Lives, whose purchase price was certainly high. And one should in my opinion consider the possibility that decorating the Lives (along four years, as one should remember) may have been an attempt by Malenotti to emancipate himself intellectually from his craft role, a form of enhancement of him and his family through the creation of an 'artist's book' sui generis. In this context, one could read the various attempts to produce a coat of arms, and especially the portrait which is observable in Duccio's life. It seems unlikely that it meant to be the artist's effigy in question and I would consider it more logical to think that it was Malenotti’s self-portrait.

Whatever the reading that you want to give to Malenotti’s drawings, one thing appears certain: the awareness that the Lives were a valuable work, to be taken into good account and to be preserved with care; a tool that can be used even for personal promotion in the society.

Back to Piacenza

I started this research by offering a portrait of Pisanello which is located in a Giuntina specimen held at the Municipal Library Passerini-Landi of Piacenza. Before finishing, I would also like to return to that library. In his shelves (location L.E/05.03.50) is also preserved a copy of the previous Torrentiniana edition (1550). Everything suggests that the two specimens had no common origin. One of the initial pages of the first volume of the Torrentiniana includes a page showing (at the bottom) a coat of arms with the initials of the owner.

Figure 38) Alfonso Coccapani’s coat of arms with an exhortation to return the book in loan, in a specimen of the Torrentiniana kept at the Municipal Library Passerini-Landi of Piacenza © Biblioteca Comunale Passerini Landi Piacenza

They were the coat of arms and the initials of Alfonso Coccapani (I do not know whether he should be identified with that Alfonso who was Knight of Malta at the end of 1500 or with the homonym Marquis, who formally took possession of Fiorano Modenese and the Spezzano castle in 1651). The fact is that, at the top, appears a beautiful and still relevant phrase. This demonstrates how precious were considered books and in particular the Lives at the time: "Oh you who have lent this book, remember to return it, so it is a duty ".

There is no doubt that all the drawings that I have presented in this article were made with the intention to further enhance a work which was then already considered extraordinary. And we, even today, can still enjoy it.

NOTES

[28] Le opere di Giorgio Vasari con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi. Vol. IV, p. 118. Florence, 1973. Facsimile reprint of the 1906 edition.

[29] Riccardo Finzi, Le sembianze del Correggio (The appearance of Correggio), Fabbrico (Reggio Emilia), 1954. Albeit briefly, I would like to recall here the basic bibliography on the portraits of Correggio, beginning with Girolamo Tiraboschi, Notizie dei Pittori, scultori, incisori e architetti natii del Ser.mo Duca di Modena (News of painters, sculptors, engravers and architects native in the territories of the most serene Duke of Modena), Modena, Soc. Tip. 1786, pp. 89-90; then Luigi Lanzi, Storia Pittorica dell’Italia (Pictorial History of Italy), Bassano, Remondini, 1795-1796 Vol. I p. 305-307; Luigi Pungileoni, Memorie istoriche di Antonio Allegri detto Il Correggio (Historical Memoirs of Antonio Allegri said Correggio), Parma, Stamperia Ducale, 1817-1821, vol. I, pp. 254-257; Corrado Ricci, Il ritratto del Correggio (The portrait of Correggio) in "Rassegna d’arte antica e moderna”, XVII, 1917, fasc. 3-4, pp. 55-67; Roger Fry, A Correggio Problem in "The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs", Vol. 52, No. 298 (January 1928), pp. 2-5, 9, and finally Riccardo Finzi, Le sembianze del Correggio, (The appearance of Correggio), Fabbrico (Reggio Emilia), 1954.

[30] See Finzi, Le sembianze… quoted; and in particular pages 29-32 and 42-43.

[31] As already mentioned, I have identified two other sketches related to Correggio which I am not publishing here. See note 10.

[32] Three Volumes Annotated by Inigo Jones: Vasari’s Lives (1568), Plutarch’s Moralia (1614), Plato’s Republic (1554). Edited with an introduction by A.W. Johnson, Åbo (Finland), 1997. I would like to thank the author for having sent me a copy of the work.

[33] Three Volumes…; quoted; p. 10.

[34] I would like to thank Mark Bainbridge for his kind cooperation. By its internal policy, the Worcester College does not want that its signatures of books are made known, but remains at the disposal of anyone needing further information.

[35] I am thanking Daniel H. Abosso for the kind cooperation.

[36] Riccardo Finzi, Le sembianze… quoted, p. 21.

[37] The claim (accepted by Finzi and many others) is based on an assertion of Luigi Pungileoni in Memorie istoriche di Antonio Allegri detto Il Correggio, Parma, 1821, Vol. III p. 90.

[38] However, there were many indexation and other graphic signs used to highlight important passages, which points out that the specimen was read and studied.

[39] I am thanking Riccardo Mazza for the kind cooperation.

[40] Francesco Marcolini, Le Sorti di Francesco Marcolino da Forlì intitolate Giardino di Pensieri… (The Fates of Francesco Marcolino da Forlì entitled Garden of Thoughts…), Venezia, published by Francesco Marcolini, 1540. I would like to thank Emanuele Bassi for having recognised the origin of the cartoons.

[41] On the right side of the portrait is visible the circular imprint left by the wax to paste the picture. A similar footprint, in the same location, is on p. 947, at the beginning of Michelangelo's biography and leads me to think that there might have been a second drawing, then broken off and lost or removed.

[42] Giorgio Vasari, Vite de più eccellenti pittori scultori e architetti scritte da Giorgio Vasari pittore e architetto aretino, corrette da molti errori e illustrate con note, Rome, Pagliarini, 1759.

[43] Corrado Ricci, Il ritratto del Correggio… quoted., p. 61.

[44] I am thanking Paola Errani for her kind cooperation.

[45] For completeness: the same solution (i.e. adding a plume of smoke coming out from the oil lamps) was taken by the artist of the Corsiniana specimen 29.E.4-6 (cfr. Par. 3) in correspondence with the effigies of Paolo Uccello and Masaccio.

[46] Placido Landini, Istoria della venerabile Compagnia di Santa Maria della Misericordia della Città di Firenze, Firenze, Stamperia Allegrini, 1786, p. CVI.

[47] I am quoting from the transcript of the manuscript, made by Carlo Pagliai and available online at http://www.dellastoriadempoli.it/vecchie-famiglie-figlinesi-1/