Exploring Treasures: Italian Renaissance, Drawings, Medals, and Books

Exploring Treasures in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum I: Italian Renaissance Drawings, Medals, and Books

March 16 to June 30, 1991 The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Boston, Massachusetts

Exploring Treasures in the 路 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum l: Italian Renaissance Drawings, Medals, and Books

Hilliard T. Goldfarb Senior Curator March 16 to June 30, 1991 The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Boston, Massachusetts

CURATOR'S NOTE

Shortly after my arrival at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in January of this year, I decided in consultation with the Director to initiate a new program of temporary exhibitions, utilizing modern signage and installation principles. These exhibitions, as the introduction to this exhibition indicates, would encompass a range of focuses, ranging from "dossier'' exhibitions, devoted to the study and interpretation of a single object, to the installation of objects in different media of comparable stylistic contexts, to the juxtaposition of diverse objects. We also intend to explore issues of conservation and archival research. In future exhibitions we hope to expand the scale and space devoted to these efforts.

From the beginning, the educational role of these exhibitions was central to my concerns. Not only the, hopefully, evocative and challenging installation of the objects themselves, but also the text labels and the reasoned discussion and interpretation of the material were critical to the process. Furthermore, as many of these objects are insufficiently known within the collection or difficult to see, so also the research and publication of many of these works remain inadequate. In a small way, these exhibitions will begin the process of addressing these problems. The more notable future exhibitions we intend to memorialize with scholarly catalogues. It became evident early on in the preparation of the text labels for the current exhibition, however, that much needed to be said, more than the wall labels could sustain. We also concluded that the public might wish to read the information at leisure. Thus, the present "catalogue" was born in the two weeks preceding the opening of the exhibition. It is a humble effort, essentially the publication of the expanded, uncut text originally written for the labels. The extraordinarily tight schedule did not permit more. However, it is a beginning, and one we celebrate. We also intend to initiate the installation of text labels into the galleries.

As museum colleagues will appreciate, five weeks from inception to the opening of an exhibition, especially when it is the first in a new format for an institution, is an insane schedule. "Fools march in where angels fear to tread." Fortunately I was accompanied in my march by a staff that jumped in and said, in effect "Let's do it." Rather like one of those old Judy Garland/ Mickey Rooney movies~ we went out, purchased, invented, or adapted what we needed and proceeded forward, from the choice of wall and label colors to the acquiring of cases and fabric, to the editing and publication of text. In the realization of all that may be viewed as successful in this project, I must single out several gallant souls. My executive administrative assistant, Troy Moss, put her extensive professional editorial and publication skills to work as well as her good humor and endless patience and creativity with whatever unexpected obstacles came our way. Among the conservation staff, Ada "Dusty" Logan in textiles accomplished miracles in the selection of materials and their preparation, assisted by Lisa Lesniak. She also volunteered her efforts for a myriad of impromptu jobs. Both Barbara Mangum and Valentine Talland in objects conservation assisted in the installation. Valentine also assisted in the task of locating and ordering cases. John Niland and Brian Krischke were central in all our installation plans and tireless in their efforts. Nothing seems impossible for John, whose cheer and industry were critical.

Lyle Grindle oversaw security concerns. Carolann Butterworth nobly offered her services in the preparation of this catalogue. I also wish to thank Katherine Dibble, Supervisor of Research Library Services at the Boston Public Library, who provided the very practical and urgently needed service of assisting us in locating exhibition cases. Finally, I extend my gratitude to our Director, Anne Hawley, whose boundless enthusiasm and vision for the outreach and growth of this institution encouraged me to proceed so quickly with this exhibition and other initiatives. Obviously, an exhibition and text prepared so quickly will have their shortcomings. While insights and original presentations of subjects reflect the contributions of many, those shortcomings are mine alone.

I would also like to acknowledge The Print House for their generous contribution and record breaking pace in so handsomely realizing this eleventh-hour production.

Hilliard T. Goldfarb Senior Cura tor

Exploring Treasures in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum I: Italian Renaissance Drawings, Medals, and Books

This exhibition constitutes the first of an ongoing series focusing on aspects of the collections of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. These exhibitions will provide the opportunity to examine isolated works of art in novel and stimulating contexts, distinctive from the unique and evocative settings of the galleries. They will permit us to focus attention on groupings of objects or single works selected from the media of textiles, paintings, sculptures, books, and works on paper. In future exhibitions we will explore conservation issues raised by diverse objects, and examine issues and themes raised by the juxtaposition of greater and lesser known objects in the collections outside the precincts of the galleries.

In this first exhibition, we present three areas of the collection which include some of the greatest treasures of the museum, but which are less well known by the public. In isolating the Italian Renaissance, one of the most celebrated areas of Mrs. Gardner's collecting, we also can explore stylistic relations between the objects.

MEDALS The earliest Renaissance works presented in this exhibition are the remarkable portrait medals by Antonio di Puccio Pisani (active 1395-1455), known as Pisanello. Pisanello was primarily esteemed during his lifetime as a painter and was active in Verona and the courts 0f Mantua, Milan, Ferrara, and Naples. He also has been lauded as the founder of the modem medal, and the greatest exponent of that branch of art. Although his pageantful fresco work and his exquisite depictions of animals in ink and metalpoint are noteworthy for synthesizing a late Gothic lyricism of long, elegant lines with an engaging naturalism in details, his medals are distinguished by their clarity of design. His first portrait medal, that of the Byzantine emperor John VIII Paleologos, commemorated the historic visit of that ruler to Ferrara and Florence in 1438-39. It was based on ancient Roman examples and a group of gold medallions of Roman Christian emperors created in Paris about 1400. The Pisanello medals, however, were much larger than ancient Imperial coinage and were cast rather than struck. The medals exhibited here were executed in the years immediately after this brilliant, early success. All of the medals are distinguished by concision of design - into which even the inscriptions are integrated - and the infusion of a new, humanist naturalism. Facial types are rendered carefully, yet with simplicity and monumentality. At the same time,_the artist appreciates the sensuous quality of the medal in its chasing and polishing of surface to convey the play of light and shadow across the features of the subjects.

Pisanello was also an early master at the presentation of foreshortening in relief sculpture, evident in the depiction of the figures on the reverse of the medal of Filippo Maria Visconti. The Visconti medal is also noteworthy for being executed in lead rather than bronze. A soft metal, lead was only used in the first castings or trial proofs by the artist.

Matteo de'Pasti (active by 1441, died 1467/68) was the most gifted of the early followers of Pisanello. Active as an illuminator, architect, and medalist in Verona and Rimini, he was employed by the Lord of Rimini, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta. His style, evident in the medal of Isotta degli Atti, mistress and later wife of Malatesta, is distinguished by the softer, less crisply and aggressively defined modeling of the figures .

Filippo Maria Visconti (1392-1447), Duke of Milan; ca.1440/41 Antonio di Puccio Pisano, called Pisanello Italian, active 1395-1455 Reverse: duke riding to the left; on right, mounted page seen from behind; between them armed horseman to front; mountainous landscape with tops of buildings in background Lead Inscribed on obverse: PHILIPPVS . MARIA . ANGLUS . DUX . MEDIOLANI . ECETERA . PAPIE . ANGLERIE . QUE . COMES . AC . GENVE . DOMINVS .

Inscribed on reverse: OPVS . PISANI . PICTORIS .

Duke Filippo Maria Visconti was among the most politically dominant figures of his times. His aggressive expansionist policies from the 1420s to the 1440s enlarged the Milanese state to incorporate for varying periods such outs~retched territories as Genoa, Parma, and Brescia, before expansion into the Romagna ultimately brought it into extended conflict with Venice, Florence, and other Italian city states.

Niccolo Piccinino (1350-1444), ca. 1441 Antonio di Puccio Pisani, called Pisanello Italian, active 1395-1455 Reverse: A griffin, symbol of Perugia, suckling two infants Bronze Inscribed on obverse: NICOLAVS . PICININVS . VICECOMES . MARCHIO . CAPIT ANEVS . MAX .

AC.MAR.AE. Inscribed on reverse: BRACCIVS. PISANI. P. OPVS. N. PICININVS

Niccolo Piccinino was the successful commander of the Milanese forces in their war with the Venetians, and was adopted by Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan and the last of his line, at the time of the peace treaty of 1439. The medal, the obverse profile of which is clearly closely related to that of Visconti, was cast about 1441. On the reverse, the griffin, a symbol of Piccinino's native Perugia, is suckling two infants, referring to the legend of Romulus and Remus and thereby more directly to Piccinino himself and his master in the art of war, Braccia da Montone, also a Perugian. The inscription alludes to both men and to the artist. #

Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417-68), Lord of Rimini; ca. 1445 Antonio di Puccio Pisani, called Pisanello Italian, active 1395-1455 Reverse: Sigismondo standing, fully armed, holding sword; on the left on a heraldic rose tree, his casque, crowned and elephant's head crest, his emblem; on right a shield Bronze Inscribed on obverse: SIGISMVNDVS. PANDVLPHVS. DE. MALATESTIS. ARIMINI. FANI . D Inscribed on reverse: OPVS . PISANI . PICTORIS

Sigismondo Malatesta, perhaps most famous to modern art historians for his patronage of the architect Leon Batista Alberti, was a celebrated and ruthless warlord of his period. He was the victorious commander of Venetian and Florentine troops over the forces of the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, at the battle of Anghiari in 1440. This medal is a poorer, softer cast than the other Pisanello medals exhibited.

Isotta degli Atti da Rimini (Died 1470) dated 1446 Matteo de'Pasti Italian, active by 1441, died by 1467 /68 Bronze Inscribed on obverse: D. ISOTT AE ARIMINENSI Inscribed on reverse: M.CCCC.XL VI.

Isotta was the young mistress of Sigismondo Malatesta, and became his fourth wife in 1456. The elephant was the emblem of Malatesta.

DRAWINGS The drawings presented in this exhibition represent a range of materials and functions typical of the evolving use of drawings in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Throughout the fifteenth century, especially during the second half, the range of artistic activities represented in works on paper expanded as the availability of affordable paper, as opposed to the highly expensive and difficult ground of parchment, increased, and diverse media, including metalpoint, pen and ink, washes, and chalks w~re fully exploited.

The tradition of pattern books, collections of drawings of figures and compositions kept in artistic workshops for continuous studio reference, can be traced to the medieval period. By the middle of the fifteenth century, drawings came to be used with increasing innovation: to record the natural world through exploratory sketches and studies, the copying of other drawings, the recording of observed monuments, landscapes, figures, and light effects for future reference, the creation of modelli (highly finished compositional studies presented to clients for approval of a project), and even the development of presentation drawings, works of art created in their own right as finished products for the client. Accompanying these expanded uses were an increasing range of graphic expressions, through both media and graphic freedom of handling.

As this exhibition reflects, different regions of Italy are evident stylistically in the Renaissance period through diverse approaches and priorities in the definitions of contour, shading, surfaces, and evocation of color.

Venetian draftsmanship sought to depict the appearance of things rather than to sharply define them. This is not surprising of artists experiencing the perceived world in the humid, moisture-faceting atmosphere of a city located on the Adriatic, the then wealthiest, most opulent city in Europe. The optical values that characterized Quattrocento painting in Venice also explain the appearance of sixteenth-century Venetian drawings.

Brittle and friable chalks yield crumbling lines and rippling light effects. Line becomes variable in defining contour, and if not absent, on the verge of fragmenting or dissipating. Line functions more in terms of suggestion and is often brushed onto colored paper. Forms emerge from running washes. Untouched areas of paper serve as glowing lights causing forms to shimmer and lending qualities of atmosphere, light, and texture.

Florentine drawing, contrarily, tended to emphasize contour and structure, much as the distinctive Tuscan light clearly defined light and shadow. Contours are clearly defined and redefined and light guides the eye along the figure or through the composition to articulate the disegno, the conceptualized structure.

The character of Roman graphic style was determined primarily by artists who came to the city from other regions and responded to the cultural impact of the capital and its rich classical traditions. The sculptural and architectural monuments of antiquity were impressed upon their imaginations. A concern to express the plasticity of forms, the essential sculptural mass and volume enclosed by figures, typifies Roman drawing style. The flow of contour line itself, its modulations and movement, conveys the roundness of forms. This sculptural quality is enhanced by a bright lighting which also models and rounds out forms and by shading, executed in curving parallel lines. Complementing their plasticity, Roman figures assume a monumentality and rhetorical magniloquence of gesture influenced by classical antiquity.

The location of Umbria between Florence and Rome is reflected in its synthesis of the outstanding characteri stics of those schools. The Umbrian drawing style is related to that of Florence in the manner in which the outline contours of figures are clearly articulated with a certain dryness. Shading and hatching are not used to structure forms and build them up in the intellectualized fashion associated with Florence, however.

Shading imparts to figures a gentle plasticity, milder and less aggressively asserted than in Roman drawing.

The long parallel lines do not direct the eyes along the figure as they do in Florence, but softly model it.

In Lombardy and in the art of Brescia the broad influence of late Northern Gothic art and the specific presence of Leonardo da Vinci in Milan are the dominant features of its draftsmen. Details of Leonardo's art, such as pointed chins, downcast eyes, and thin noses, become recognizable stereotypes. An interest in highlights tends to dissolve forms and reduce the sense of mass in figures. Unlike the art of Venice, in which forms emerge and dissolve in palpable, dense atmosphere, light seems to stream across the surface of figures in Lombard drawings.

Mrs. Gardner did not seek to amass a substantial collection of drawings, and did not think of herself as a drawings collector. Her drawings, some of which were purchased while others were gifts, served as a complement to her paintings collection. The Italian drawings were purchased at a single auction, that of the collection of the renowned drawings collector, connoisseur, and first director of the future Victoria and Albert Museum, Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913), held at Christies' in London in May 1902.

A Portrait of a Turkish Scribe or Painter Gentile Bellini Venice ca. 1429 - Venice 1507 Pen and ink and brush and wash with gouache and gilt on parchment Provenance: Bought from a Turkish family in Istanbul by Dr. F. R. Martin; acquired from him through Anders Zorn in 1907.

Inscribed in upper right in Arabic on parchment of a century later onto which the earlier parchment is mounted: Work of lbn Muezzin who was a famous painter among the Franks This celebrated and beautiful portrait of a courtier painting or writing has traditionally been attributed to Gentile Bellini, although the attribution must remain uncertain. As earlier scholars have creatively suggested, the inscription may reflect an erroneous transcription of a now-lost earlier inscription in Greek of "Bellini."

The artist who was responsible for the inscription at the right likely also added the incomplete floral design at left.Gentile was the elder brother of the great Venetian painter Giovanni and legitimate son of Jacopo Bellini, for whom he worked and whose studio he inherited. Gentile collaborated with his brother on eighteen panels for the Scuola (confraternity) di San Giovanni Evangelista. Tn September 1479, the artist was sent by the Venetian Republic to Constantinople as court painter to Sultan Mehmet II, remaining there until November 1480. Gentile is recorded as having painted many works for the court, including a portrait of the Sultan.

Probably his most famous work is a Procession through the Piazza San Marco of 1496, now at the Accademia in Venice. In his will of February 1506 he left an album of drawings on paper, now at the British Museum, to his brother Giovanni. A second such album by Jacopo, executed on parchment and now at the Louvre, apparently was brought by Gentile to Constantinople and remained there until the nineteenth century. A conservative artist influenced by his father and his brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, Gentile's rather stiff and conventional work is at its best when the artist is working in large narrative paintings in which genre details and a traditional Venetian taste for colorism and the evocation of textures enliven his work. It is not surprising, therefore, that his signed and dated (1480) Portrait of Mehmet II, now at the National Gallery in London, with its oriental subject, should be among his most successful works. Like the London portrait but exceptional in Gentile's general work, the Gardn~r portrait miniature is infused with a non-Turkish, Venetian sensitivity to light and shadow, evident in the rendering of the subject's face, hands, table, and subtly modeled turban, and in the Western appreciation of mass and volume. The artist also imitates oriental profile and design conventions, especially appreciating those of color and rich patterns that would appeal to a Venetian.

In a related, approximately contemporary variant version of the portrait by a Turkish artist now at the Freer Gallery in Washington, the figure is seen in profile without the suggestion of volume and mass, rather in silhouette, further de-emphasizing mass by elaborating the decorative detailing of the robe and simplifying the silhouette itself. Since Turkish painting was at this time influenced by Venetian painting, it seems more likely that the Turkish painter was influenced by Bellini, whose work he copied in a Turkish vernacular, rather than vice versa. Although the attribution of the portrait to Gentile must remain conjectural due to its distinctive treatment and media, its attribution has been accepted historically by Berenson, Sarre, Fry, Borenius, Popham and Pouncey, Hartt, Fredericksen and Zeri, and Pignatti. Recently, the Islamic art specialist Julian Raby has proposed an attribution to the virtually unknown and little-defined medalist, Costanzo di Ferrara, who visited Istanbul about 1480, a derivative artistic figure. The traditional attribution of this lovely and subtle portrait to Gentile Bellini remains the most reasonable.

A Man Pulling on a Loop Studio of Pietro Vanucci, called Perugino Castello della Pieve 1446 - Fontignano 1523 Metalpoint on prepared paper Provenance: Connestabile Collection, Perugia; John Charles Rooinson (1824-1913; Lugt 1433).

Perugino's career is synonymous with the school of Umbria, although his work carried him throughout Italy, primarily to Florence, Rome, and Perugia. His renown was already such that in 1481-82 he worked on the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican with the most celebrated Florentine painters of the time. The serene, dolce paintings and drawings of Perugino, with their gently articufated sense of rhythmic compositional flow and softly modeled figures, were decisively influential on the many artists who passed through his studio, including the young Raphael, the greatest of Perugino's pupils.

Drawing was an integral part of workshop training. When not used directly for the preparation of a painting, drawings were the means by which skill and studio style could be communicated to a new apprentice. Pupils were encouraged to copy a drawing by the master. Indeed, Leonardo advised that "the painter ought first to train his own hand by copying drawings from the hands of a good master ..." Furthermore, copy-drawing, besides the facility and skills it provided, helped channel the diverse artistic talents and inclinations of individual assistants within the studio in a uniform direction. It was also practical and inexpensive as a means of training. As Francis Ames-Lewis has noted, "Raphael's earliest drawings are often difficult to distinguish from Perugino's probably because many of them copy workshop exemplars." , The Gardner Perugino studio drawing is a case in point. The distinctive, softly modeled figure and his pose and features clearly derive from Perugino, as does the shading both within and outside the figure with hatching, parallel strokes. The contours of the figures, however, are not drawn with the sureness and suavity, the uninterrupted flow and rhythm of the master; furthermore, the face lacks the characterization of mood typical of Perugino's figures. An identically attired and posed figure appears with another figure on sheet at the Albertina in Vienna, attributed to the workshop of Perugino. A comRarably posed figure, attired as an angel, exists at the Uffizi. The original drawing by Perugino of a posed model or studio assistant, which these studies probably copied, does not survive. The Gardner drawing is much livelier and freer than the Vienna copy, which is quite stiff and hard, and comparatively crude. While our drawing comes closest of the remaining versions to the master himself, Konrad Oberhuber is undoubtedly right in seeing it originating in the studio.

The figure appears to be pulling on a loop and may have been the model for an angel holding up a baldacchino. As has often been noted, in its general pose the figure is reminiscent of the figure of the suitor breaking his wand across his knee, but as though seen from the opposite side, in the (Marriage of the Virgin) of 1504 by Raphael.

a

Christ and St. John the Baptist Filippino Lippi Prato 1457 /1458 - Florence 1504 Pen and brown ink Provenance: Jonathan Richardson, Jr. (1694-1771; Lugt 2170); William Roscoe (1753-1831; Lugt 2654); William Esdaile (1758-1837; Lugt 2617); John Charles Robinson (1824-1913; Lugt 1433).

Filippino Lippi was the son of Filippo Lippi, studied with Fra Diamante, and worked in the studio of Botticelli in the early 1470s, working primarily in Florence, but also in Rome, Prato, and Pavia.

This sheet is typical of Filippino's animated, nervous drawing style after 1490, and the drawing, attributed to the master at the time of the Robinson sale, has been accepted as by Filippino by Berenson and subsequent authorities. The figures' contours are sharply and clearly defined in assertive, rapid pen strokes; the artist clearly concerned himself in this study both with the general compositional interrelationship of the figures and with the definition of Christ's drapery. The subject, St. John and Christ meeting as youths, is not uncommon in Central Italian paintings of this period, but none of the known depictions resemble the drawing. A painting of the Meeting of Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate by Filippino, executed in 1497 and now in Copenhagen, employs a virtually identical arrangement of figures, one traceable ultimately to Giotto's Meeting at the Golden Gate from the Arena Chapel in Padua (1304-1306).

The drawing has been mounted together with an engraving after it by Conrad Metz (1749-1827). The engraving (with later touches in pen and ink) typically reverses the composition it copies.

A Gondolier Vittore Carpaccio Venice(?) about 1460/1461 - Venice about 1526 Brush and brown ink heightened with white gouache over indications in black chalk on blue paper faded green-tan.

Provenance: Marlborough Library Collection; John Charles Robinson (1824-1913; Lugt 1433).

Although generally esteemed a conservative historical painter of the Venetian school, Carpaccio actually played a significant role in the development of Venetian painting at the tum of the sixteenth century. While influenced in his early career by Antonello da Messina, about 1490, possibly influenced by travel to Rome, his style changes, with a greater sense for space, more natural light, and the influence of Perugino. Nonetheless in his subject matter, his sense for atmosphere, color and texture, his use of multiple media and colored paper, and his grand, pageantful narratives, Carpaccio is very much a Venetian artist. Also Venetian is his use of fine-pointed brush in dark ink with white highlight on colored paper, not to work out his first idea for a painting, but as a preliminary study for an individual figure whose role in a painting has already been determined. His drawing style is more closely related to that of the Bellinis, with whom Carpaccio worked in the Palazzo Ducale. As Terisio Pignatti has noted, the use of hatching parallel strokes and squared face is typical of the Bellini school. He is most celebrate~ for the cycles of paintings depicting the lives of saints and stories associated with them and with Venice commissioned by the Scuole (confraternities) of Venice. These narratives blend poetic fantasy, history, and contemporary views of Venice. The handsome Gardner drawing is a study for the figure of the gondolier in the right middle distance of Carpaccio's The Healing of a Madman with a View of the Rialto of 1494 (now in the Accadernia, Venice) from the cycle of eight paintings on the subject of The Miracle of the True Cross painted for the Scuola San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice. The painting records an event, the miraculous curing of a possessed youth, that took place in Venice in the same year. It is thus filled with contemporary details of Venetian life. The figure in the painting differs slightly in expression and in details of his clothing, including the addition of ribbons and introduction of openings down the center of his tunic to reveal his white shirt, and the completion of the oar he is holding. The hat worn by the figure in the painting is similarly more elaborate. Note how the artist has modified the pose of the gondolier's left foot between the original underdrawing in black chalk and its realization in ink, a pose comparable to that in the painting.

On the verso of the sheet is a Study of a Man's Head executed in a similar style in the same media and presumably at the same period, which may be related to the figure of the patrician shown seated in the gondola guided by the gondolier on the recto. The verso also bears an inscription by a later hand "del Carpazi."

Pi eta Michelangelo Buonarroti Caprese 1475 - Rome 1564 Black chalk Inscribed by the artist along the length of the base of the Cross: nonuisipensa.quanto.sangu[ ... ] Provenance: Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547); M. Brunet; Sir Thomas Lawrence; Samuel Woodburn; Brooks of Liverpool; Francis Turner Palgrave; John Charles Robinson (1824-1913; Lugt 1433)

Although as a draftsman, Michelangelo probably is most famous for his preparatory chalk studies of the human figure and his pen and ink compositional and architectural sketches, he also executed a limited number of presentation drawings, finished art works created with the intention of gift presentation. Michelangelo prepared such drawings at three periods during his career: the 1520s (for Gherardo Perini), the early 1530s, and briefly in the 1540s. These drawings, as his gifts of poems, served to characterize his relations with those he loved, especially Tommaso de'Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna. :rhese drawings were not created out of duty to patrons or on commission, but rather out of affection; as Michelangelo stated, "per amore e non per obrigo." In the early 1530s Michelangelo presented the handsome Tommaso de'Cavalieri with drawings of the Rape of Ganymede, Fall of Phaeton and Punishment of Tityos. Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa di Pescara, was the widow of the imperial general Ferrante Francesco d' Avalos, and descended from one of the oldest and noblest Roman families. Devout and highly intelligent, she was a poet of note and one of the leading figures in the movement to reform the Church from within. Michelangelo became her very close friend and admirer during the last years of her life. They exchanged poems and many letters with each other, and Vittoria Colonna owned a Noli Me Tangere designed by Michelangelo and executed by Pontormo (1531-32).

Probably in the early 1540s (proposed datings for the sheets range from the late 1530s to about 1545), Michelangelo presented Vittoria Colonna with three drawings, two of which- a Christ on the Cross at the British Museum and the Gardner drawing- survive. The Gardner drawing was carried out at her request and is specifically mentioned by Ascanio Condi vi in his 1553 biography of the still-living artist. On the upright of the Cross, Michelangelo has inscribed a line from Dante's Paradiso, "No one thinks of how much blood it costs." Of course, the implication is precisely that the pious Colonna, as the artist himself, does think on such matters. Indeed, Michelangelo cites Christ's blood in a dozen later poems. Barely visible in the underdrawing are alterations in the positioning of the hands of the Virgin, whose face resembles that of Michelangelo's Rachel (1542-45). A crown of thorns is lightly delineated at the feet of Christ. The Cavalieri and Colonna drawings, clearly meditational sheets executed with great care and effort, are remarkable in their sensitivity to soft modeling and atmospheric shading of the figures, less boldly sculptural and monumental than his more common figure studies. The Virgin and her son form complementary human crosses, and the meaning of her expression and gesture to heaven is given poetic expression through the verses running up the cross.

The poses of the angels suggest their orbital movement about Christ. Rotational compositional structures were used by Michelangelo at this time in the Last Judgment and, subsequently, in the Pauline Chapel. The drawing has been cut at the top and bottom margins. An engraved copy of the drawing by Giulio Bonasone of 1546 (closest in date, composition, and soft-modeled 'handling to the drawing) and one of 1547 by Nicolas Beatrizet reveal that originally the Virgin's arms were mirrored by the arms of a Y-shaped cross. In engraved copies by G. B. de Cavalieri and Agostino Carracci (1579), the cross is configured traditionally, with a perpendicular crossbar. Early painted copies and plaques indicate the composition with no cross-bar, as it now appears, or with a conventional cross-bar. In Michelangelo's presentation drawing of the same period of Christ on the Cross, also for Vittoria Colonna, the artist depicts a standard cross, but a Y-shaped cross, suggestive of the Trinity, does appear in a later drawing (after 1550) by the artist, now in the British Museum.

A Pope Carried in the Sedia Gestatoria, with His Retinue Raffaello Santi, called Raphael Urbino 1483 - Rome 1520 Red, orange-red, yellow, black, and white chalks on paper squared twice for transfer in black chalk, once under the drawing, once over it.

Provenance: William Russell (1800-1884; Lugt 2648); John Charles Robinson(1824-1913; Lugt 1433).

Konrad Oberhuber first connected the Gardner drawing to three related drawings by Giulio Romano, Raphael's chief assistant during his last years in Rome. Both the purpose and attribution of the present sheet to Raphael were confirmed by Oberhuber, an opinion subsequently reaffirmed by John Gere and Paul Joannides, among others. Gere has written extensively on the Gardner Raphael drawing, recognizing it as an important late example of the master's large-scale compositional studies for studio use. The composition, reminiscent of sculptural relief and probably organized in the studio from draped models, is of the left half of a composition for the Sala di Constantino, a commission finished by Raphael's studio after the master's death.

The drawing, executed in the highly unusual media for the period of mixed chalks, shows Pope Sylvester I (reigned 314-335) in the sedia gestatoria corning out to meet the Emperor Constantine. The facts that the pontiff sits in a chair reserved for use by the pope yet wears a bishop's mitre rather than a papal tiara confirm the identification. The subject was ultimately depicted in a significantly revised format, less simple, monumental and spatially coherent, by Giulio Romano and Penni in 1524, as The Donation of Constantine. Giulio's pen and ink drawing at the Louvre of the same left half of the composition already modifies the composition significantly, replacing the accompanying clerics with Swiss guards, indicating a monumental arch through which the figures pass, confusing the spatial relationships of the participants. A large sheet in Amsterdam presents the further developed modello for the complete composition, while a drawing in Stockholm preserves a study by Giulio for the horsemen on the right. Ultimately the concept of the image was radically revised. Constantine kneels in a pillared hall before the Pope, to whom he hands a document (historially spurious) ceding supremacy over Rome and the adjacent territories. As Joannides has noted, many features of the present sheet speak to its authorship by Raphael: its concision and clarity of design, its remarkable orchestration of colored chalks (a method repeated by Raphael in one portrait drawing, of an ecclesiastic, of the same period but never adopted by his studio), and the surety of the lightly indicated black chalk studies of attendant figures. As Gere observes, the loose, impressionistic handling of the chalk is comparable to other drawings by Raphael of this late period. The use of colored chalks in this fashion is most commonly found among the followers of Leonardo in Milan. As the squaring of the drawing for transfer (notably twice: once underneath the drawing and once over it), the light sketching in of the background figures, and the blocking out of part of the head by the sedia gestatoria indicate, the study embodies an intermediate phase in the working out of the composition, enlarged and developed from an earlier sketch and itself designed to be repeated and further developed, probably in the modello for the final cartoon of the fresco. The use of the colored chalks may also be related to Raphael's evolving conception of the composition, as he works out the coloristic effects upon the clarity, interrelationships, and mass of figures. In recent years the Gardner drawing has come to be recognized by all the leading Raphael scholars as among the most important and rare examples of the master's late chalk style.

Musicians with a Performing Dog Girolamo Romanino Brescia between 1484 and 1487 - Brescia 1559 Red chalk Provenance: John Charles Robinson (1824-1913; Lugt 1433) Romanino's artistic style reflects his Brescian origins. That city was under the rule of the Venetian state, yet geographically and culturally also tied to Lombardy. Romanino was one of the most important painters of the Veneto and blended many qualities from the Venetian school of painting with those of Lombard art. Hi s early works already demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the art of Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian; indeed, the Gardner drawing bore an attribution to Giorgione at the Robinson sale of 1902. Yet his figures, especially in his paintings, can be earthy, and his compositions aggressive and even violent, in a manner untypical of Venice. The Gardner drawing is also representative of this hybrid character. The forms, drawn in the sensual and sensuously evocative medium of red chalk, emerge and dissolve within a palpable atmosphere as one would expect of a Venetian artist of the sixteenth century. On the other hand, light streams off the surfaces of the figures, an effect enhanced by the parallel shading strokes of chalk that are unimpeded by the contours of the figures. Surfaces shimmer, the hatching strokes of the chalk are vivid, nervous, almost violent, and the figures' faces and forms are less idealized, more natural than one would find at this date in Venice. Strong featured, they engage in their music-making activity with animation and low-life humorous involvement of the dog. All these latter characteristics reflect the Lombard affiliation of Romanino's distinctively Brescian style. A contemporary (1530s) Venetian representation of such a group of musicians~ the subject of a "concert champetre" was quite common among Venetian painters - would be far more lyrical and poetic, idealized, and restrained. As Florence Kossoff has noted, the subject of music-making appears in four other drawings by Romanino and in two lunettes painted in the Grand Loggia of the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento (1531-32). One of the pen and ink drawings may date as early as about 1520. Because of their stylistic relation with each other and with the frescoes, a drawing in pen and ink and wash over black chalk of a "concert champetre" in the Lehman collection, two other red chalk studies of musicians (one, of flute players in the Uffizi, the other of musicians and a satyr formerly in the Scholz collection and now at the Morgan Library), and the Gardner sheet are datable to about 1530-32. It should be noted, however, that there is no direct connection between any of the drawings and the painted compositions, the lunettes being even less poetic and "Giorgionesque" in mood than the drawings. One of these studies, that of a group similar to ours in the Lehman collection, also bore an attribution in its past to Giorgione.

Study for a Figure in the Altarpiece The Resurrection of Christ, Church of SS. Annunziata, Florence Angelo di Cosimo di Mariano, ca'lled Bronzino Monticelli 1503 - Florence 1572 Black chalk Provenance: Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792: Lugt 2364); John Charles Robinson (1824-1913; Lugt 1433).

It was Sydney Freedberg who first identified this drawing is a study for the bearded, cuirassed soldier in the lower left of The Resurrection by Bronzino at SS. Annunziata, and, indeed the pose is virtually identical to that in the painting.

Bronzino, whose art is closely tied to the style of mannerism, was a pupil of the Florentine painter Jacopo Pontormo. Bronzino's emulation of the drawing style of Michelangelo was intensified by a stay in Rome between 1546 and 1547. The altarpiece, begun after his return to Florence and contracted in 1548, is undoubtedly a response to Michelangelo's Last Judgment (unveiled in October 1541). Bronzino's altarpiece was completed in 1552. When we compare the drawing of Bronzino to the style of Michelangelo, however, the latter's orientation to sculpture and his extended exposure to Rome are evident in the far greater sculptural plasticity and evocation of mass and volume in Michelangelo's figures. By comparison, the work of Bronzino is more schematic, and its contours emphasize design pattern at the expense of the conviction of weight and mass. This characteristic is also reflective of Bronzino's concerns as a mannerist artist. Elegant style (bella maniera) and grace in pose and proportions of the figure dominate the artist's concerns, to the extent that the figure of the soldier - who afterall is experiencing the miracle of Christ's rise from the tomb - seems artificially and balletically posed. His posture is less determined by the inner dynamic of his response to this most fundame~tal of Christian miracles than by the stylistic dictates of a courtly and stylized artistic convention.

The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine Paolo Caliari, called Veronese Verona 1528 - Venice 1588 Brown ink and brush and white gouache on paper with prepared gray-green ground Provenance: (?)Paolo Caccapani, Bishop of Reggio Emilia (1584-1650); Sir Peter Lely (1618-80; Lugt 2093); John Charles Robinson (1824-1913; Lugt 1433).

So-called "chiaroscuro drawings," with their brilliant and sensuous coloristic sensibility and use of colored inks and papers, are distinctively Venetian, and Veronese was one of the masters of the technique. Such drawings were esteemed as finished art works in their own right, also serving as modelli to be sent to patrons for approval of commissions. This highly finished drawing is clearly related to Veronese's painting of the same subject (a mystical vision which occured to the fourth-century Alexandrian saint after her baptism, in which the Virgin miraculously appeared with the Infant Jesus, who offered the nuptial ring as a symbol of her dedication) commissioned for the church of S. Catarina in Venice, and now in the Accademia, a work of about 1575. The subject was a popular one in Venetian art and Veronese and his workshop represented it in as many as seventeen paintings. Rollin vanHadley has summarized the minor differences between the drawing and the painting, which include the number of putti and music-making angels, the altered pose of the head of the angel behind the saint, the pose of the infant, th~ addition of an accompanying figure, the addition of a step and changes in draperies. The relation of the drawing to the painting and its autograph status have become the subjects of controversy, however. Philip Hendy accepted the sheet as a study for the painting, while the Tietzes considered it a mode/lo. Other scholars have accepted the attribution, but Robert Cocke has rejected the sheet, calling it a copy because of its lack of spontaneity, the "claw-like hands" and heavy handling. Diane de Grazia also rejects its attribution to Veronese. Recently, both Terisio Pignatti and John Gere have accepted the drawing as autograph. As Pignatti noted, the drawing is so close in its over-all composition and proportions to the painting itself that it might rather be a ricordo than a mode/lo. We would agree with his observation that the sheet has an unevenness of quality. Certain portions, such as the two angels behind the Virgin and the two figures looking at each other around St. Catherine, appear to be by the master himself. On the other hand, other minor areas appear to be completed more clumsily, notably the lower drapery and hands of St. Catherine and the angel supporting her hand and the spatial relations of columns and balustrade.

Intriguingly, the pose of the Christ Child is more believable in the drawing than in the painting. Pignatti has suggested that the drawing, corresponding to Venetian workshop practice, might have been begun by the master himself and completed within the studio. Furthermore, as John Gere has noted, if the drawing were not by Veronese but by a contemporary copyist, who would be capable of getting so very close to his master's graphic mannerisms? Further complicating the issue is the condition of the drawing. The absence of underdrawing or modifications of the design would argue against the drawing being executed before the painting.

The sheet suffers from restoration and surface wear, notable in the legs and feet of the lower left angel. In summary, the sheet is likely a ricordo executed primarily, possibly entirely, by Veronese himself, which served as a presentation drawing. It appears to be based not on the painting itself, but on an earlier compositional scheme or mode/lo, possibly with further modifications.

BOOKS

Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer had perfected printing in their workshops in Mainz by 1450. Within about a decade shops appeared at Strasbourg and in the Rhineland. By 1475, centers of printing existed throughout the Po valley, as well as Venice, Florence, Mantua, Paris, Lyons, and Seville, among many other towns. A high proportion (about three-quarters of all production) of books printed before 1500 are in Latin; Italian had the highest percentage (seven percent) in the vernacular; and religious works predominated, followed by classical texts. The printed book had become a major international industry by 1510. In the sixteenth century in Paris more than 25,000 editions were published, with 45,000 in Germany, and 15,000 in Venice. Apart from pamphlets and broadsheets, about 200 million copies of books were published in the sixteenth century. As the public expanded, so, not surprisingly, did the range of subjects and use of vernacular languages. The earliest book printed from movable type containing woodcut illustrations was produced in Bamberg in 1461.

Early illustrations, similar to the crudely printed single-sheet woodcuts sold at fairs, were often roughly and coarsely brushed with color, especially in Northern Europe. This practice was less common in Italy. The Gardner collection owns an early, finely printed edition of Dante's Divine Comedy, the first with the Landi no commentary, featuring engravings (rather than woodcuts) with illustrations based on designs by Botticelli.

(That edition will be featured in a future exhibition.) Two other illustrated editions of the work, one an extremely rare Brescian publication of 1487, the other a beautiful and celebrated Venetian edition of 1578, are presented here. Mrs. Gardner also acquired the first portable edition of Dante's Divine Comedy, an edition published in Venice in 1502 by Aldus, who specialized in the production of portable editions.

Among the finest early editions of the classics were those that came from Italy, especially Venice and Milan.

In the last years of the fifteenth century and early years of the next century, Aldus Manutius in Venice was the greatest publisher in the field, bringing out numerous scholarly editions in both Latin and Greek. Indeed, possibly the first movable-type Greek press was created in 1594 by Aldus, who had moved to Venice in 1589.

He founded a society of scholars of classics in Northern and Central Italy, who associated and consulted through correspondence, in the publication of these texts. The society was called the Aldine Academy.

Besides producing multiple Latin texts, the Academy was responsible for the diffusion of a substantial body of Greek literature, including the works of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Pindar. From 1470 to 1500 nearly two hundred presses were at work in Venice, and over four thousand titles were published in the city during those years. By the beginning of the sixteenth century Venice had become the leading producer of printed texts in Europe, remaining so well into the century.

Between 1886 and 1924, Mrs. Gardner conscientiously built up a collection of a thousand rare books spanning six centuries. The printed books include ten fifteenth-century books and seventy-four from the sixteenth century. She was advised by Charles Eliot Norton, but, typically, ultimately followed her own inclinations.

In 1906, Mrs. Gardner wrote a catalogue of rare and noteworthy books in her collection, and had it privately printed.

DANTHE ALIGHIERI COL COMENTO DI C. LANDINO. Published: Brescia, Boninum de Boninis, 1487 This book is the very rare third edition of Dante's Divine Come,dy with Cristofaro Landino's commentary, the text reproduced from the famous Florence edition of 1481, a work illustrated with engravings after designs by Botticelli and also in the Gardner collection. The Brescian edition is illustrated instead with sixty-eight woodcuts, three of the pages in the present copy, those at the opening of each of the three books of the Divine Comedy (the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso) illuminated with gilt and colors. The Gardner copy was once owned by John Ruskin, whose signature appears in the book. The work has been opened to the commencement of the Paradiso.

POLIPHILI HYPNEROTOMACHIA. ubi humana omnia non nisi omnium esse docet atque obiter ph.uima scitu sane quam dina commemorat.

Francesco Colonna Published: Venice, Aldi Manutii, 1499.

Perhaps nowhere in publications of the tum of the sixteenth century is the pedantic aspect of the apparatus of humanist and classicist learning, the contemporary delight in arcana, pastiche classical forms of literature and farcical theatre better demonstrated than in the whimsical Hypnerotomachia Poliphili composed by the Venetian Dominican friar, Francesco Colonna. The book is an absurd and virtually unreadable mixture of fantasy, obscure learning, mixture of classical languages with Venetian vernacular, odd images, and imaginary descriptions of ancient monuments and ceremonies. The plot, if it can be called one, is based on a lover's dream; the hero, Poliphilo, is guided through mystical arcana so that his soul may be purified in the ultimate union of Love and Death. The work contains over eighty woodcut illustrations, some comical and others delightfully pageantful, many containing an elaborate and esoteric iconography. The presented pages depict a Triumph, described in the text below, and include, besides the delightful elephants, a float bearing Leda and the Swan. Besides the ~lassical precedent of such triumphal processions (and Mantegna's painted series of 1480-95, with prints after them by his studio), such pageants with mummeries and floats were commonly held in Venice to celebrate the visits of important personnages.

DIVINA PROPORTIONE. Opera a tutti glinegni perspicaci e curiosi necessaria Ove ciascun studioso di Philosophia: Prospectiva Pictura Sculptura: Architectura: Musica: e altre Mathematice: sua vissima: sottile: e admirabile doctrina consequira: e delectarassi co[n] varie questione de secretissima scientia.

Antonio Capella Published: Venice, Paganius Paganinus, June 1509 The text, in Latin and Greek, is devoted to the description of the construction of various geometric volumes and configurations and their application to calligraphy. The text is illustrated throughout with woodcut figures. At the conclusion of the third mathematical tractatus of the text and preceding the descriptive presentation of Latin letters, the human head, as rudimentarily defined within mathematical proportions, is represented as an embodiment of "Divina Proportio." As Michael Baxandall has noted, such books served a commercial public as well as academic and artistic audiences. The skills used by artists to create and analyze forms were comparable to those used by businessmen in measuring commodities and the internal proportions of physical bodies in commercial exchanges, and both audiences were trained through the mathematical studies offered in secondary schools of the period. Thus the literate public had the geometric educational training to appreciate the achievements of artists. The illustrated study is reminiscent of Leonardo's drawn study of the proportions of a head, now at Windsor, Royal Library, reflecting the common concerns of the reriod.

MUSAEUS et ORPHEUS. Musaei Opusculum de Herone & Leandro. Orpha argonautica. E iusdem humni.

Orpheus de lapidibus.

Published: Venice, Aldi Manutii, 1517 This volume is an example of the portable editions of classical texts that the Aldine Press popularized and established as one of its specializations. In the present edition, the Hero and Leander (shown) of Musaeus is printed bilingually in Greek and Latin, while the Orphic hymns are printed solely in Greek. As noted in the introductory label, Aldus was an innovator in the creation of a Greek movable-type press and the publication pf authoritative Greek texts with the consultative assistance of scholars whom he formed into an "academy" lhrough correspondence. Note the characteristic use of italic characters in the printing of Latin and Greek.

DELLE VITE DE'PIU ECCELLENTI PITIORI, SCUL TORI ET ARCHITETIORI Scritte da M. Giorgio Vasari Pittore et Architetto Aretino (Secondo, e ultimo Volume della Terza Parte. Nel quale si comprendano le nuove Vite, Dallanno 1550 al 1567).

Giorgio Vasari Published: Florence, Appresso i Giunti, 1568 Giorgio Vasari's Vite remains to this day an authoritative source for the biographies of Italian artists from the period of Cimabue and Giotto, at the outset of the fourteenth century, to his own day. In the first edition of his work, published in 1550, Vasari (born in Arezzo in 1511 and Florentine by training, dying there in 1574) is even more clearly propagandistic in his ambitions. The first edition is organized to praise the accomplishments of Florentine artists, with the career of Michelangelo as the climax of the work. While it is evident in the second edition of 1568 that Vasari continued to see Michelangelo as the culmination of the development of art in Italy, the preeminent figure whose work exceeded even the noble precedent of antiquity, the accomplishments of other artists, notably Raphael, are appredated as capable of approaching Michelangelo's in some respects. The expanded and revised second edition, which also corrects many factual errors in the earlier edition, is more balanced in its presentation of other, non-Florentine artists and regional schools as well. It is divided into three sections, including theoretical discussion of the arts and the fundamental role of disegno (design/ drawing) both in the conception and the execution of a composition. Besides the biographies, the Vite contains two theoretically oriented prefaces and three introductions, devoted to painting, sculture, and architecture. Vasari was a painter, architect, theoretician, and writer of significance in his own right. The 1568 edition updates biographies through the preceding year. The third volume is open to the beginning of the Life of Michelangelo.

DANTE CON L'ESPOSITIONI DI CHRISTOFORO LANDINO, ETD'ALESSANDRO VELL VTELLO. Sopra la sua Comedia dell'Infemo, del Purgatorio, & del Paradiso. Con Tavole, Argomenti, & Allegorie, & riformato, riveduto, & ridotto all Sua vera Lettura per Francesco Sansovino Fiorentino.

Published: Venice, Giovambattista Marchio Sessa & Fratelli, 1578.

In this elegant edition, which includes commentary by three authors, the text is presented in italic (a font often used in early books for classics) while the commentary is arranged along the sides. The illustration is by Francesco Sansovino, the son of the celebrated sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino. Francesco was also a jurist, antiquarian, founder of the Accademia Veneziana in 1557, and compiler of Venetian guidebooks. The book is open to a page with text of the twenty-seventh canto of the Paradiso, and accompanying woodcut illustration.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Francis Ames-Lewis. Drawing in Early Renaissance Italy. New Haven, 1981.

Michael Baxandall. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy. Oxford, 1972.

Bernhard Berenson. The Drawings of the Florentine Painters. 3 vols. Chicago, 1938.

Anthony Blunt. Artistic Theory in Italy 1450-1600. Oxford, 1940.

Richard Cocke. Veronese's Drawings. A Catalogue Raisonne. London, 1984.

Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin. The Coming of the Books: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800. London, 1976.

M. L. Ferrari. Romanino. Milan, 1961.

S.J. Freedberg. Painting in Italy 1500 to 1600. Baltimore, 1971.

J. A. Gere, et al. Drawings by Michelangelo from the British Museum. New York, 1979.

J. A. Gere. Drawings by Raphael and His Circle from British and North American Collections. New York, 1987.

J. A. Gere and Nicholas Turner. Drawings by Raphael from the Royal Library, the Ashmolean, the British Museum, Chatsworth and Other English collections. London,1983.

Frederick Hartt. The Drawings of Michelangelo. London, 1971.

Rollin Van N. Hadley, ed. Drawings. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boston, 1968.

Philip Hendy, European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boston, 1974.

Michael Hirst. Michelangelo and His Drawings. New Haven, 1988.

William M. Ivins, Jr., Prints and Visual Communication. Cambridge, MA, 1953.

Paul Joannides. The Drawings of Raphael. Oxford, 1983.

Eckhart Knab, Erwin Mitsch, and Konrad Oberhuber. Raphael. Die Zeichnungen. Stuttgart, 1983.

Frits Lugt. Les Marques de collections de dessins et d'estampes ... Amsterdam, 1921.

Charles McCorquodale. Bronzino. New York, 1981.

A. Hyatt Mayor. Prints and People: a Social History of Printed Pictures. Princeton, 1980.

John Pope-=Hennessy. An Introduction to Italian Sculpture II: Italian Renaissance Sculpture. London, 1958.

John Pope-Hennessy. Renaissance Bronzes from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Reliefs, Plaquettes, Statuettes, Utensils and Mortars. London, 1965.

G. F. Hill and Graham Pollard, Renaissance Medals from the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the National Gallery of Art. London, 1967.

Terisio Pignatti. Venetian Drawings from American Collections. Washington, 1974.

A. E. Popham and Philip Pouncey. Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. 2 vols. London, 1950.

Philip Pouncey and J. A. Gere. Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Raphael and his Circle. 2 vols. London, 1%2.

Julian Raby, "Pride and Prejudice: Mehrned the Conqueror and the Italian Portrait Medal," Italian Medals ' (National Gallery of Art: Studies in the History of Art, vol. 21). Washington, 1987.

Charles Seymour, Jr .. Sculpture in Italy 1400 to 1500. Baltimore, 1966.

Hans Tietze and Erika Tietze-Conrat. The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Ne.w York, 1944.

Cornelius C. Verrneule, III, Walter Cahn, and Rollin van N. Hadley. Sculpture in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boston, 1977.

Roberto Weiss. Pisanello's Medallion of the Emperor John VIII Palaeologus. Oxford, 1966.

Johannes Wilde. Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Michelangelo and His Studio. London, 1953. 路 Edgar Wind. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. New York, 1968.

Carolyn C. Wilson, Renaissance Small Bronze Sculpture and Associated Decorative Arts at the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1983.

William D. Wixom. Renaissance Bronzes from Ohio Collections. Cleveland, 1975.

Au tour de Raphael: dessins et peintures du Musee du Louvre. Paris, 1983-84.

Italian Plaquettes (National Gallery of Art: Studies in the History of Art, vol. 22). Washington, 1987.

The Salton Collection: Renaissance and Baroque Medals and Plaquettes. (Bowdoin College). Brunswick, ME, 1965.