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Between the end of the Fifteenth and the beginning of the Sixteenth century (as documented by the Pietro Summonte's Letter to Marcantonio Michiel and Michiel's descriptions of collections in Veneto and Lombardy), the art of books illumination entered the field of collecting interests; shortly thereafter, during the fourth decade of 15th century, the words "miniatura" and "miniare" enter in the literary lexicon with Pietro Aretino: in some letters he attributes a negative meaning to this art, considered as a slavish copy of the works of great masters (a practice that was attested by the sources for Giulio Campagnola). Elsewhere, Aretino means "miniature" as an art worthy of fame when he writes about Iacopo del Giallo, whose technique and skill he praises. With Giorgio Vasari, the art of illumination on parchment is one of the techniques worthy of being represented by biographies in his &Vite>. Vasari, in addition to formulating appreciations for this art in the past centuries, in different cases introduces the words "miniare" and "miniatura" as technical-stylistic definitions, independently from its traditional field of application, the painting on parchment. After Aretino and with Vasari a new perspective opens up in the appreciation of an art that, at the time of its decline, begins to represent a wider role (painting in small dimensions and "minutissima") in the panorama of arts.

In the first half of the Eighteenth century grows up an important interest in Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts. The article investigates the contributions that Giovan Mario Crescimbeni, Apostolo Zeno, Giambettino Cignaroli - protagonists of the Italian cultural landscape - gave to the affirmation for the new taste for book decoration: they increased it even through the development of a modern linguistic model which anticipates issues of literature on art of the second half of the century.

Giovanni Previtali's La fortuna dei primitivi, published in 1964, has opened the road to new researches on the history of taste through the interpretation of artistic literature from Vasari onwards. During the last two decades, this subject has had a development even for the rediscovery of medieval illumination in 18th and 19th centuries. This paper proposes some starting points to extend chronological limits and interpretative categories of the history of the genre miniatura.

The Cocharelli Code is a valuable witness for the illuminated Ligurian painting of the first half of the fourteenth century. This article adds some information about the history of the 27 fragments, now preserved in London, Florence and Cleveland, starting from the news which are offered in some nineteenth century sales catalogs.

The paper investigates the fortune of the miniature on parchment through the evidence of Medieval and Renaissance Italian sources. The research points out the tendency of readers and public to look at decoration with particular interest for the illustrated pages observed as 'small paintings'. The evidence keys in this process, read in parallel with the history of conservation and collecting, are some texts written by the humanists Guarino Veronese, Gaspare Tribraco, Roberto Orsi in XVth century, and Marcantonio Michiel’ Notizia, drawn up between the third and fifth decade of the XVIth century.