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Raphael 9 April-31 July National Gallery, London Catalogue by David Ekserdjian, Tom Henry et al. ISBN 9781857096583 (hardback), 40 [pounds sterling] (National Gallery Company) Despite the shortness of his life, [...]

Working in collaboration with others, Agostino Veneziano produced three remarkable prints representing nude women seated or standing beside spectacular all'antica vases and set before ruinous landscapes. This article investigates the authorship and origin of these unusual images. It suggests that the vases are presented as a metaphor for female beauty, and relates the visual rhetoric of these three prints to the writings of contemporary writers, including Agnolo Firenzuola (1493-1543), who described the beauty of women in relation to the elegant proportions of such vases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the additional evidence about the books of Baldassarre Castiglione, a Renaissance author in Italy. The author states that there are three more documents that appeared concerning Castiglione's acquisitions of books. These papers are to be found in Cassetta 6 of the Archivio Castiglioni, in the Archivio di Stato at Mantua. He adds that the documents consist of two letters together with a list of payments and expenditures, which a Mantuan merchant Benedetto Adelardo Da Porto addressed to Castiglione in 1523. Furthermore, the author says that the first of these papers is drafted on September 12, 1523 and the others are written around two months later.