Journal of the History of Collections vol. 23 no. 2 (2011) pp.

253–265

What makes a picture?

Evidence from sixteenth-century Venetian property inventories

Chriscinda Henry

This essay evaluates sixteenth-century Venetian property inventories as evidence for art historical inquiry.
It begins with a brief description of the available archival fonds and the character of the inventories they

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contain – their purpose, organization, and the types of information they provide. This is followed by a
critical analysis of their descriptive language, which I argue is best studied over a large sample size. I
focus on how tensions between the ‘plain’ language of the inventories and the rich physical complexity of
the art objects they characterize complicate this effort. In closing, I use the conclusions drawn in the first
part of the essay to address a particular research question on the status of prints as objects of display in
the Venetian home. The inventories provide evidence suggesting that the display of prints alongside
paintings and other artworks on the walls of private homes was far more widespread in the Renaissance
than can be demonstrated by surviving physical examples.

In Book Two of his treatise On Painting, Leon Battista
Alberti rejects the use of real gold in the composition
of painted istorie in favour of its artful imitation. Yet
he is careful to qualify his objection: ‘I say, I would not
censure the other manufactured ornaments joined to
paintings such as sculpted columns, bases, capitals
and frontispieces even if they were of the most pure
and solid gold.’ ‘In fact,’ he continues, ‘a well per-
fected storia deserves ornaments of the most precious
gems.’1 In this passage Alberti cleverly transfers the
practice of adoring holy persons through the adorn-
ment of icons and altar paintings to the adoration of
painting itself and the painter’s ingegno through an
identical practice of pictorial ornamentation. I draw
attention to Alberti’s brief excursus on the worked
and embellished frames of paintings because it reso-
nates so perfectly with the characterization of paint-
ings and other art objects in the very different context
of the Renaissance property inventory.
In the sixteenth-century Venetian household prop-
erty inventories that are the focus of this essay,
notaries and other assessors present quadri – best
translated here as ‘pictures’ – as complex, aggregate
objects comprised of various mountings, image-bearing
surfaces, frames, covers, doors, curtains, candle-stands,
and other accoutrements. Their brief descriptions
hint at the layered richness of a largely ephemeral
‘objecthood’: the great variety of textures, colours,
patterns, and worked materials that are almost entirely
lost to us as modern viewers of dismantled and
re-worked objects.2 While the Venetian inventories do
not record Alberti’s carved ivory and gem-encrusted
frontispieces and capitals, they do catalogue silk pic-
ture curtains and canvas covers in hues of green, black,
yellow and turquoise, or painted with arabesques and
allegorical figures; covers of engraved silver; and
frames with gilt columns, in walnut carved with gilt
leaves, vines and bead motifs, or simply painted
in shades of red, black, or turquoise. However, the
attempt to use these seemingly straightforward docu-
ments to understand the richness and complexity of the
artworks people owned and displayed in their homes is
complicated – sometimes completely frustrated – by the
very language used to describe the objects: its opa-
city, vagueness, inconsistency, and polysemy.
This essay focuses on the perception of media and
materiality evidenced in the descriptive language of
sixteenth-century Venetian property inventories
and explores the practicalities, pitfalls, and potential
rewards of evaluating this language by scrutinizing
the generic term quadro and a web of its attendant and
related terms. Although modern scholars often take
quadro to signify a painting, the inventories employ
this term as a catch-all way to designate a broad range
of framed and unframed art objects including mini-
ature tapestries, wood and terracotta relief panels,

© The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1093/jhc/fhq034 Advance Access publication 19 January 2011
 chriscinda henry
even prints pasted directly on the wall. This is true
not only of Venetian inventories, but as Dagmar Eich-
berger has recently noted, of records regarding Mar-
garet of Austria’s collections as well.3
I argue that while detailed studies of individual
property inventories, patrons, and collections can be
highly valuable, it is only through study of a large
sample of inventories – and ideally an entire fonds –
that it becomes possible to properly assess the lan-
guage used to designate the characteristics of paintings
and other artworks. Such thorough analysis reveals
the rich range of objects that were considered quadri
and displayed together on the walls of Venetian homes.
Further, it clearly demonstrates that quadri were not
considered as isolated categories according to their

various media, and that paintings, in contrast to the
singular position accorded to them by modern scholar-
ship, were not privileged over other types of artworks.
I examine the heterogeneous nature of the quadro
through a case-study focused on the display of prints –
printed maps and pictures but not written documents –
on the walls of Venetian homes. This ephemeral
practice is amply documented in the inventories al-
though little physical evidence for it survives to the
current day. A hand-coloured North Italian woodcut
of The Virgin with the Infant Christ on her Knee now in
the Victoria and Albert Museum may offer a rare
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glimpse of just such a print (Fig. 1).4 The surface wear
and relatively large scale of this woodcut (it originally
measured 2 feet by 1½ feet), which is laid down on
Fig. 1. Unknown Northern Italian,
The Virgin with the Infant Christ on
her Knee, c.1450-75, woodcut
coloured by hand and pasted on
to wood. © Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.
 what makes a picture?
wood, strongly suggest an early history of wall dis-
play. A similar print now in the British Museum and
also originally pasted on panel is known to have come
from the door of a house in Bassano, where it would
have served devotional, and potentially apotropaic,
functions for its earliest owners.
I take up the case of displayed prints because it
points to a significant linguistic barrier in using Ven-
etian property inventories as evidence for art histor-
ical inquiry, namely the fundamental ambiguity of the
term quadro. In this example from a typical Venetian
property inventory an artwork is described as ‘a
painted picture of the Adulteress framed in walnut
with gilt foliate carvings and rows of pearls [i.e.
beaded moulding].’5 Here the valuable materials and
decorative details of the picture’s frame are given in
greater detail than the medium of the picture itself,
which makes sense in the context given the value of
the exquisitely worked walnut, the finest wood used
for Italian Renaissance frames. In this case the
‘painted picture’ described is most likely a painting
rather than a painted print or relief carving, yet the
language demonstrates a lack of precision widespread
in the inventories that prevents us from evaluating
this assumption with certainty. From other more
informative entries we know that prints, whether
framed or unframed, mounted on wooden panels or
pasted up as loose sheets, hung as quadri on the walls
of Venetian homes. However, the vast majority of
quadri, telleri, and ritratti – the three most common
terms used to describe pictures – are characterized as
simply that, with no technique or medium assigned.
While we may assume that many of these undifferen-
tiated pictures were in fact paintings on canvas or
panel, we should also assume that some were prints,
drawings, or paintings on other supports.
Types of household inventories in sixteenth-
century Venice
It is useful to begin this examination by giving a brief
account of the major inventorial archives that docu-
ment art ownership in sixteenth-century Venice,
providing an overview of the types of information
they contain about pictures and the ways in which
this information is organized. Such concerns with
the nature of the archive, more normally addressed
by economic historians than art historians, prove

especially valuable for attempts to answer big-pic-
ture questions about broad trends in collection habits
over decades. This essay relies on two series of post-
mortem property inventories held in the Archivio di
Stato di Venezia (hereafter ASV) that furnish a
more-or-less continuous record of evidence regard-
ing the collection – and to a more limited extent the
display – of artworks in Venetian private homes dur-
ing the sixteenth century: the Giudici del Proprio,
Mobili (hereafter GPM) and the Cancelleria Inferiore,
Miscellanea di notai diversi (hereafter MND).6 I focus
primarily on the period between 1529 and 1570,
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years covered by my survey of both inventorial series,
although I have drawn on some later inventories
from the MND for the discussion of prints.7
I am by no means alone in surveying a large sample
of Venetian property inventories for the purpose
of researching practices of art collection. In recent
years a number of studies have appeared, perhaps
most significantly two of the three volumes affiliated
with the collaborative research project, Il Collezione
d’Arte a Venezia, which focuses on the early modern
period and includes a digitized catalogue of select art
objects from Venetian property inventories, 1500-
1800.8 Beyond this initiative, the art historians Michel
Hochmann and Bertrand Jestaz and the economic his-
torian Isabella Cecchini are among the individual
scholars who have conducted detailed studies of either
the GPM, the MND, or both fonds in recent years.9
The Giudici del Proprio, or ‘judges of civil cases in
the first instance’, comprised the Venetian law court
concerned in the sixteenth century with questions of
matrimony, inheritance, and disputed testaments.
The inventories of the Mobili series were used to
aid in the restitution of women’s movable property
(mobili) and the return of dowries from estates in the
cases of the dissolution of marriages and of intra-
family disputes following the death of a husband.10
Approved inventories taken by public notaries were
required for the settlement of a widow’s claim, and a
more-or-less continuous series survives from 1511
through to the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797.11
Many of the thousands of sixteenth-century docu-
ments are quite short (a page or less in length) and
very few record the value of individual items of prop-
erty such as artworks.12 As Cecchini has pointed out,
only rarely are these inventories specified as complete
catalogues of movable household goods; in fact, they
frequently list only one or two types of goods
 chriscinda henry
(e.g. clothing, jewellery, legal documents).13 Further,
many of the documents are in very poor condition,
some completely illegible.
Taking these caveats into account, Cecchini’s survey
of over 1,300 sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century
inventories in the Mobili series shows that between 65
and 75 per cent of the sampled Venetian households
contained quadri and artworks otherwise identified as
paintings. These numbers are so high because, as is
common to post-mortem inventories generally, the
series is skewed toward the upper classes.14 In Venice
this included the ruling patricians (who made up only
about 5 per cent of the total population) and the cit-
tadini, or professional citizen class just beneath them in
status (lawyers, doctors, civil servants, and wholesale
and international merchants) who accounted for another
5-6 per cent of the population. The remaining 89-90
per cent of the Venetian population was comprised of
both foreigners and the heterogeneous popolo, or lower
classes.15 Among the popolani, shopkeepers, artisans,
and small-scale merchants are well represented in the
inventories, while proportionally smaller numbers of
the labouring classes are included.
The notarial series of the Miscellanea di notai diversi,
inventari is quite different in nature and comprises a
limited series of just over 700 property inventories
made between 1497 and 1630. At its peak density be-
tween 1530 and 1546, the MND contains only about
twenty inventories per any given year, a minute sample
size for a city with a population that grew from be-
tween c.115,000 to 170,000 residents over the course of
the sixteenth century. Unlike the GPM inventories,
one or more pictures are present in less than half the
documented households, although where they are
present there are more often large collections.16 Like
the inventories of the GPM, the MND series is also
skewed toward patricians and wealthy citizens, but
does include a good cross-section of Venetian house-
holds from the most modest (porters and sailors who
rent one or two rooms) to the wealthiest (patricians
who owned multiple homes and country estates), and
pictures are present in households from across all levels
of society. Both Jestaz and Hochmann provide infor-
mation on the size of collections, noting collections of
five or more pictures to be statistically rare among the
sixteenth-century inventories, although collections
certainly grew over the course of the century.17
We also know less about the purpose of the MND
inventories, only that they were concerned with ques-

tions of inheritance in the case of under-age or absent
heirs and that they were drawn up at the request of
the commissari del defunto, that is the relatives, friends,
and business-partners of a deceased person charged
with dispensing the will.18 The inventories were then
validated by one of the sixty-odd notaries of the
Cancelleria Inferiore, or Venetian Lower Chancery.19
Cecchini characterizes the nature of the series as
unclear and non-homogenous and excludes it from
her sample due to its small size.20
Because the MND inventories were intended to
ensure the preservation of property rather than
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provide estimates for the sale of goods, they (like the
probate inventories of the GPM) generally lack valu-
ation.21 However, in comparison with inventories
drawn up for the law courts, those collected in the
MND series are unusually rich in information: not-
able for their completeness as catalogues of movable
property found on the property (or properties) of the
deceased, their richer descriptive detail, often clear
organization, and greater legibility. It should thus
come as no surprise that they have been more pro-
ductively mined by art historians and other scholars
of material culture than have the inventories of the
GPM.22 What the MND series may lack in terms of
application to broad economic questions due to its
small size, the individual documents make up for with
their clarity, thoroughness, and relative internal con-
sistency, which can be augmented by evidence from
the far more numerous but less robust and consistently
organized GPM inventories.
Art hung on the walls inside the
Venetian home
What follows is a brief introduction to the types of in-
formation contained in the inventories, intended to
give the reader a sense of their relationship to the
spaces and objects they partially capture. This begins
with their overall organization, the order in which
rooms, spaces, and objects were inventoried, the kinds
of artworks mentioned, and how these items are
organized into lists. Next, with regard to quadri
specifically, I summarize the ownership patterns that
emerge regarding the number of quadri in a given col-
lection, their physical characteristics, and finally the
popularity of various subject matters and genres (por-
traits, devotional paintings, landscapes, etc.). Following
 what makes a picture?
this summary orientation, the essay moves on to
examine in greater depth the terms with which quadri
(paintings, prints, drawings, sculpted relief panels,
miniature tapestries, etc.) are described, before con-
cluding with the example of displayed prints.
In the majority of MND inventories but to a far
lesser extent those of GPM, objects are listed by the
room in which the notary, sometimes accompanied by
an identified friend or relative of the deceased, found
them on a physical walk-through of the home, with
the rooms usually though not always identified by
function or location, and often beginning in the bed-
room of the deceased or in the portego (the central re-
ception hall of the Venetian palace). This may reflect
a prioritized approach to the walk-through focused on
value, since the most valuable property in a home
(money, financial documents, beds, arms, tapestries,
clothing, and other textiles, jewellery, etc.) were most
often concentrated in these two rooms. In keeping
with what could reflect such a prioritized approach to
locating value, the inventories often conclude with the
kitchen and storage rooms.
Pictures and other wall-mounted objects such as
mirrors and tapestries found hanging in a room are
normally listed either together in one group, in which
case they appear alongside the contents of individual
chests, for example, or together by the wall on which
they hung, interspersed among the items of furniture
located near that wall and the property found in or on
such furnishings. In the former case, the pictures
might receive an introduction such as ‘quadri erano in
la camera grande . . .’ (pictures that were in the master
bedroom), and even when the room is not indicated
its function can often be surmised based on the other
objects listed in proximity to a given group of pic-
tures.23 Thus, although the inventories do not tell us
precisely where or how high on a wall a given picture
hung, they do often tell us in which room a picture was
found, whether it was located at the top of a stairwell or
in proximity to a bed or writing desk (for example),
and what other types of pictures, wall-hangings, and
objects were found nearby. Of course, pictures could
also be found stored as the contents of casse (chests), or
elsewhere in the home (behind doors, in storage clos-
ets), especially if they were old, damaged, or broken.
The inventories also amply demonstrate that pic-
tures were present in all types of rooms within the
Venetian home, with the highest concentrations in the
portego and camere (multi-purpose domestic rooms

adjacent to the portego), particularly in the camera
grande, sometimes called the camera d’oro, usually the
bedroom of the deceased. Yet pictures were also
found in the studio or studiolo (often a separate study
annexed to or wholly separated from the bedroom),
the cucina (kitchen), in various antechambers, hall-
ways, stairwells, ground-floor botteghe (workshops),
in country villas, farmhouses, even the rooms of a
mistress’s home or rental properties owned by the
deceased. Despite such frequently careful and thor-
ough documentation of objects and their locations,
only a handful of the inventories from across the
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whole period mention the name of a particular artist.24
This lack of attention to authorship could reflect the
perception of art in the period, but may instead result
from the fact that few inventories at this time give
valuations. Such lists preserve the presence and to
some extent the physical characteristics of objects
whose monetary value must have been separately
determined elsewhere.
As Nicholas Penny has emphasized, the over-
whelming majority of pictures owned by Renaissance
Venetians were images of the Virgin, followed at some
remove by those of Christ.25 Most inventories contain
between one and three pictures, and if only one pic-
ture was present in a home it was almost certainly ‘un
quadro della Madonna’ that hung in a bedroom. Carlo
Crivelli’s small panel of a Madonna and Child from
c.1490, still complete with its engaged cassetta-type
frame, offers an exquisite high-quality example of the
types of Madonna painting produced for this large-
scale domestic market (Fig. 2).26 Ownership of two
pictures most commonly includes another image of the
Madonna in a bedroom, and a small collection of
three to five pictures dispersed among a series of rooms
might also include a Christ, whether shown crowned,
blessing, carrying the cross on his shoulder, or crucified
on the cross, a portrait of a name saint or other favoured
saint (Jerome, Christopher, and Mary Magdalene were
particularly favored in Venice), or a simple devotional
motif such as the Madonna with two or three family
name saints. Scenes from the life of Christ or the Virgin
rank next in prevalence, with the Annunciation, Ador-
ation, Adulteress, Last Supper, and Pietà being generally
the most popular subjects, although this of course
changes over the course of the century.
Beyond the range of religious subjects that dom-
inate the inventories, family portraits (of the deceased
and their spouses primarily but also of parents and
 chriscinda henry
siblings, although rarely children) are the most com-
monly found pictures in Venetian households, no
matter the number of paintings owned. As Jestaz and
Hochmann have rightly emphasized, collections of
artworks with mythological, genre, and historical sub-
jects were far more unusual.27 For example, the inven-
tories I sampled contain more than forty pictures
whose subject is given simply as ‘una donna nuda’, a
nude woman. The ‘donna nuda’, an umbrella term
that could of course include pictures of Venus and
other classical deities, nymphs, Fortuna, the virtues,
Cleopatra, courtesans, etc., appears in households at
all levels of society, making her the most popular
identified subject category among the lesser genres (of

Fig. 2. Carlo Crivelli, Madonna and
Child, c.1490, tempera on panel.
Image courtesy of the Board of
Trustees, National Gallery of Art,
Washington.
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non-religious and portrait subjects) until c.1570.
From this date forward landscapes, which were some-
times collected and displayed in series of between four
and ten or up to thirty or more pictures, take over in
popularity for the last decades of the sixteenth cen-
tury. Many of these were imported Flemish paintings
and prints, which may have served as less expensive
substitutes for tapestries.28
Inventorial language
Any effort to discern the rubrics that pertain to the
description of pictures in the inventories depends
first and foremost on our ability to evaluate the
 what makes a picture?
language employed by the notaries who wrote them,
which is of course a non-standardized, aggregate lan-
guage, the structure and terminology of which fea-
tures both reassuring consistencies and perplexing
anomalies over the course of the sixteenth century.
Such an investigation must begin with the funda-
mental term quadro and the constellation of related
terms used to designate pictures of all sorts that
could be hung on the wall. Here it is worth bearing in
mind that the term quadro is generic and used to
refer to a range of quadrangular objects in addition to
artworks, such as tablets for writing, food prepar-
ation, etc. In the overwhelming majority of cases
where the reference is clearly to an art object, no-
taries describe them as a ‘quadro di . . . nostra donna’
or ‘quadro con . . . un cristo passo’ (a picture ‘of Our
Lady’ or ‘with a dead Christ’). Other less common
terms include ‘una tavola con . . .’ (a wood panel
with), ‘una tella di . . .’ (a canvas of), ‘uno retratto di
. . .’ (a portrait of), or simply ‘uno San Zorzi’, (a St
George or other subject). In addition, prints, paint-
ings on paper, and drawings can be referred to simply
as ‘disegni’ (drawings), ‘schizzi’ (sketches), ‘carte’
(papers), as in ‘una carta di nostra donna fiaminga’ (a
Flemish paper of Our Lady), or ‘pezzi di carte’, as in
‘dodese peci de carte depente’ (twelve pieces of painted
paper).29
More complicated is the term ‘teller’, the Venetian
word for the Italian ‘telaio’, which is used in the in-
ventories to refer either to the wooden frame that
holds a painting, to the support on which a canvas is
stretched, or, like quadro, to the picture itself as an
object. This latter possibility is somewhat common
in the GPM inventories, where ‘un teller di . . .’ or
‘un teller quadro di . . .’ are terms used to designate
the picture itself, as in ‘doi telleri fiandresi depenti su
tella’ (two Flemish pictures painted on canvas).30 At
other times, notaries use the term in the conventional
sense, as in ‘un teller dorado per un quadro’ (a gilded
frame for a picture), or ‘un teler senza quadro’ (a frame
without a picture). Of course the stretcher is also
a type of frame, and the two parts (stretcher and
external frame) could even be incorporated in cassetta-
type frames.31 It is even possible that the notaries
indicate such differences in frame type or frame parts
through their choice of terms for framing devices, a list
which includes ‘teller’, ‘soaze’, ‘cornise’, and ‘fornimento’.
Such a criterion of differentiation may be suggested
by the occasional alternation between frame terms

within a single inventory.32 In the case of the teller it
could be that the back frame was used as a stretcher
for a painting engaged to the frame or that the picture
and frame are carved from a single piece of wood. In
such a case, a term which could mean painting,
stretcher, or frame could also account for all three
parts simultaneously in a single object.33
The notaries frequently qualify the basic designa-
tion of a picture as a quadro or teller by indicating the
size of the work, whether ‘grande’ or ‘grandeto’ (large),
‘mezano’ (mid or medium size, also half-length), ‘sot-
tomezano’ (under medium size, also less than half-
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length), ‘picolo’ (small), or ‘miniato’ (sometimes
meaning miniature). Quite frequently small works are
also characterized in the diminutive form as quadreti.
A curiously precise term like sottomezano suggests a
rubric of standard sizing that could have been used by
the Madonneri (large-scale producers of devotional
icons of the Madonna) and other artists to establish
the monetary value of works for sale. Less frequently,
pictures are described by their format and orientation
as long, ‘longo’ or ‘longeto’, and ‘basseto’ (small or
short), although ‘uno quadro della Madonna basetto’
might also refer to the format of a figure presented in
half-length. The inventories indeed indicate figures
in half- or bust-length as ‘una figura in mezado’, ‘in
mezza figura’, or ‘una Giudita mezano’; again here
meaning must be derived from the context because
the same terms are also used to describe the overall
dimensions of pictures.
More rarely the description of the format of a
quadro indicates its placement in a particular type of
room. The ‘quadro da portego’ may indicate the large,
usually long and horizontally oriented multi-figure
narratives painted for the long central entrance hall of
the piano nobile, while the ‘quadro da camera,’ or
chamber picture, presumably indicates a smaller com-
position with fewer figures (especially simple devo-
tional images) for the camere, or family rooms,
adjacent to the portego.34 Again with these examples
we may have hints at semi-standardized forms of pro-
duction for niches within the domestic art market that
were recognized by artists, patrons, consumers, and
notaries alike.
As noted in the introduction, designations for
pictures – quadro, teller, retratto – with the obvious
exceptions of terms like tavola and tella, leave great
ambiguity with regard to medium and support, al-
though in many cases useful qualifiers are provided.
 chriscinda henry
Most common, the materials of the picture’s support
might be indicated, such as ‘un quadro in tavola’ (a
picture on wood panel) or ‘di tella’ (on canvas). Less
common but still relatively frequent are quadri on
paper or paper laid down on a canvas or panel sup-
port: ‘uno quadreto . . . di carta incolla su tella’ (a small
picture on paper glued on to canvas). Such pictures
must have been far more common than their scant
survival would seem to indicate. A painting of The
Head of Christ by Petrus Christus now in the Metro-
politan Museum offers a rare extant example of an oil
painting on parchment laid down on wood, which I
use here because Venetians were avid collectors of

Netherlandish art already in the fifteenth century,
and increasingly from c.1490-1500 onward (Fig. 3).
Mentioned more rarely are ‘quadri di legno’ (pictures
of wood, i.e. carved relief panels),35 miniature paint-
ings on parchment,36 and those of painted ormesin, a
light silk, damask or velvet,37 or even ‘pezzi di oremesin’
(pieces of silk) stitched together.38 The medium of a
given work’s technique is less frequently recorded,
but then often with precision as ‘a sguazo’ (in tempera
or gouache), ‘di olio’ (in oil), as ‘carta stampada’
(printed paper), or more specifically as a woodcut
or copper engraving, with two particularly curious
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examples painted in green and white grisaille.39
Fig. 3. Petrus Christus, Head of
Christ, c.1445, oil on parchment, laid
down on wood. Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art
Resource, NY.
 what makes a picture?
What becomes clear from all this descriptive lan-
guage is that terms like quadro and quadreto are opaque
and polysemic in the sense of having multiple applica-
tions and meanings. They may refer to paintings
on wood, canvas, paper, parchment, silk, or velvet, to
various types of prints, to small-scale tapestries,
sculpted relief panels, and drawings. Further, as will
be explored below in the example of prints, these cat-
egories are not always clearly differentiated. This is
the reason for my insistence on translating the term
quadro as picture rather than painting or image, stress-
ing both its generic nature with regard to technique
and medium and its materiality as an object.
Turning the discussion now to our principle ex-
ample, that of displayed prints, means confronting
the linguistic situation at its most complicated.
‘Quadri di carta’ (pictures [made] of paper) could of
course be paintings, drawings, or prints (whether
painted or not).40 While pictures on paper are perhaps
most likely to be prints, the descriptive language of
the inventories cannot in most cases confirm such an
assumption. The affiliated term ‘miniato’ is also com-
plicated. An expected association with miniature
painting is confirmed in some descriptions by the
materials, such as the ‘tre quadri miniati in carta peco-
rina’ (three miniated, i.e. illuminated, pictures on
parchment).41 Yet in other cases the notaries appear to
be describing prints, as in ‘un quadro di una pietà stam-
pado di miniado’ (a picture of a Pietà printed in mini-
ature [or in fine detail]).42 In another case ‘pezzi di
figure di rame miniadi per metter sui quadretti con tella
sotto’ (pieces of figures of miniated, i.e. finely incised,
copper for putting on pictures with canvas under-
neath) may be etched or engraved copper plates for
making prints that would then be mounted on canvas
or – more strange but more literal – pieces of copper
figures that would be mounted directly on canvas.43
The implied meaning of ‘miniato’ in some cases thus
appears to be a generic one of ‘fine description,’
whether painted or incised, and this again throws me-
dium into question for works described simply as ‘un
quadretto di carta miniada’ (a small illuminated or
printed picture on paper).
In the case of sculpted relief panels, also normally
termed quadri or ritratti, it seems we can be more sure
that the materials will be indicated as wood, terracotta,
stucco, bronze, marble, or stone, or that descriptive lan-
guage such as ‘a rilievo’ (in relief) or ‘d’intaglio’ (carved),
will make it easier to differentiate between these objects

and prints and paintings, although ‘quadri d’intaglio’,
which are likely carved wood, could also be engrav-
ings.44 Taken together, these examples of ambiguous
and changeable language underscore the importance of
evaluating the efficient short-hand of notaries across a
large sample rather than assuming a particular meaning
based on the contents of an individual document.
Ideally, one would survey many or all the documents of
a given fonds and also examine groups of documents by
the same notaries from the notarial acts of the ASV
(a much larger fonds).
Finally, in closing this examination of the term
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quadro and its constellation of attendant and associ-
ated terms, I want to move on to my second objective
and share a promising finding regarding the display of
prints in the Venetian home, just one among the many
potential avenues of research opened up through a
broad survey of property inventories. In their book
The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550, David Landau and
Peter Parshall speak of the need for an ‘archival en-
dorsement . . . to prove the existence of a taste for col-
lecting prints in Italy.’ In the absence of such an
endorsement they hypothesize that only ‘a small
number of prints were of such quality and size that
they could stand among paintings in the decoration of
rooms where they might be displayed similarly
framed.’45 As it turns out, sixteenth-century Venetian
property inventories go a long way toward providing
just such an endorsement, showing that prints of
various sizes and subjects, both framed and unframed,
hung in the rooms of Renaissance homes.
Beginning in 1536 and increasingly from 1550 on-
ward, the Venetian inventories list prints, either
clearly identified as ‘quadri di carta stampada’ (pic-
tures [made] of printed paper), or somewhat more
ambiguously as ‘quadreti d’intaglio depenti’ (small
painted pictures that could be of painted carved wood
but are more likely engravings), ‘quadri di carta’ (pic-
tures on paper), or simply ‘dodici santi in carta’ (twelve
saints on paper).46 Here it should be remembered that
the inventories represent post-mortem snapshots, and
that works may have been bought as early as the fif-
teenth century and displayed in the same (or differ-
ent) places for decades, even in the case of a print if it
were properly mounted and framed and particularly
valued by its owner. If we take into account that some
of the maps Venetians displayed on their walls, such
as ‘a small world map placed [i.e. pasted] on panel’
were almost certainly prints, then the evidence dates
 chriscinda henry
further back to at least 1526.47 In making this claim I
am deducing that when maps and pictures on paper
are found grouped among the mirrors, paintings, and
other objects found hanging on the walls of Venetian
homes, they were similarly on display – a hypothesis
bolstered by the fact of their framing.48
In my survey I found twelve instances of framed
and unframed pictures described with precision as
‘una stampada in carta’ (a print on paper), ‘uno quad-
reto a stampa’ (a small printed picture), or ‘. . . in taglio
di rame’ (copper engraving), ranging in number from
one to more than fifteen prints per collection, and al-
most certainly found hanging on the walls given their
location in the documents alongside paintings in the
portego and camere of Venetian homes.49 As with
paintings, the majority of these works depict the
Virgin, Christ, and saints if a subject is given, and
many were indicated as small in size, not nearly so im-
pressive in scale as the large woodcut Virgin with the
Infant Christ on her Knee mentioned in the introduc-
tion (see Fig. 1).50 As discussed there, the survival of
such prints, so fragile once removed from their ori-
ginal frames and supports, is extremely rare, particu-
larly for those prints pasted or sealed with wax directly
to the wall. In the inventories I also found examples
(although fewer) of prints identified as collected in
albums, and several groups of drawings and prints
stored in cases and chests, but have not included those
groups here as they were not used for display.
Beyond these twelve examples, I made note of at
least twenty other instances of framed and unframed
‘quadreti di carta’ or ‘carta incollada’ (pictures and small
pictures on paper or paper glued to wood or canvas),
again in often sizable groups of between four and
thirty-four, with some identified as series of portraits
or landscapes, that were grouped among paintings
and other wall-mounted objects. Given the large
numbers of ‘quadri di carte’ listed in some collections
and the rarity of surviving or documented paintings
on paper, I propose that many if not most of these
groups of pictures on paper were prints. For example,
at the time of her death in 1536, the courtesan and
avid art collector Elisabetta Condulmer had ‘four
small framed pictures of various figures on paper’
hanging in a bedroom among framed paintings and
eight more small pictures in the portego laid on canvas
and framed, again listed alongside a number of framed
paintings. Notaries often lump groups of quadri together
like this without giving their subject, yet because in Con-

dulmer’s case the notary consistently gives the subjects
of her paintings with precision, it seems particularly
likely that the framed pictures on paper without recorded
subjects were prints. The likely motive for such omis-
sions is that inventories are primarily concerned with
valuable property (whether restituted to a widow or
passed on to heirs). Thus, the subjects of prints may not
have been indicated due to their lack of perceived value,
as also proves the case with old, damaged, and broken
pictures or terracotta figures that are ‘de poco momento’ or
‘niuna valuta’ (of little or no value).51
To push the point beyond this group, even works
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described as ‘carta miniada’ (which could mean
incised or engraved paper as well as miniature paint-
ing) or ‘carta depenta’ (painted paper), could have
been prints given the nuances of notarial language
examined in this essay, especially since prints were
frequently painted. Given the descriptions of dis-
played prints and the entries that probably describe
prints, and pushing the logic of the inventorial lan-
guage further, it is therefore also highly likely that an
untold number of the undifferentiated quadri and es-
pecially the quadreti, or smaller pictures, and series of
multiple quadri and ritratti found hanging on the walls
of Venetian homes were framed or unframed woodcuts,
copper engravings, etchings, and hand-coloured prints
rather than paintings, and simply not identified by their
medium. Taken together, the evidence I have gathered
here suggests that in sixteenth-century Venice prints
were more commonly displayed on the walls of homes
than previously thought. A more thorough survey, of the
type made possible through the Museo di Venezia pro-
ject and the research of scholars like Jestaz, Hochmann,
and Cecchini, could provide much stronger archival
endorsement regarding the collection and display of
prints in the sixteenth-century Venetian home.
In conclusion I want to reiterate the great potential
Venetian property inventories have to tell us about
what Alberti called the ‘dignified beauty of things’.
First, they document the rich range of objects that
were considered quadri and displayed together in a
complex and eclectic bricolage of sizes, shapes, sub-
jects, materials, and textures on the walls of Venetian
homes. Secondly, and perhaps providing further evi-
dence for the heterogeneous taste of Venetian collec-
tors, the notarial rubrics employed in the inventories
do not divide the different media of quadri into iso-
lated categories, which results in a certain degree of
ambiguity regarding the perception of media and
 what makes a picture?
technique. Thirdly, and perhaps most important for
the modern art historian to keep in mind, the inven-
tories appear for the most part to serve as neutral
records with regard to the relative value and import-
ance of the paintings and prints displayed alongside
each other on the walls of Venetian homes. With few
exceptions they do not describe the subject matter or
craftsmanship of paintings in greater detail than that
of prints, even if the latter were presumably far less
valuable in monetary terms. Thus quadri should be
studied as the complex, multi-media phenomenon
the inventories reveal them to be, and Renaissance
collections should be evaluated in a far more uni-
versal fashion than they normally are. Property in-
ventories can also be used to recover details of the
physical ‘objecthood’ of artworks, and Alberti’s
‘manufactured ornaments’ – the frames, shutters,
covers, curtains, cases, etc. – that for the most part no
longer survive. Here I have argued for the use of large
samples of inventories across broad chronological
periods and for exercising caution in attempting to
recover an object’s precise physical nature and
appearance from inventorial short-hand, while still
highlighting the kinds of important discoveries its
careful analysis can yield.
Address for correspondence
Chriscinda Henry, 130 Eagle Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
chriscinda.henry@yale.edu
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Alex Bamji for her generous research assistance
in the ASV.
Notes and references
1 My translation is adapted from J. R. Spencer, On Painting (New
Haven and London, 1966), p. 85, and from the vernacular
Italian edition published by R. Sinisgalli, Il nuovo De pictura di
Leon Battista Alberti (Rome, 2006), pp. 240-41: ‘Dico bene che
gli altri fabrili ornamenti giunti alla pittura, qual sono colunne
scolpite, base, capitelli e frontispici, non li biasimerò se ben
fussero d’oro purissimo e massiccio. Anzi più una ben perfetta
storia merita ornamenti di gemme preziosissime.’
2 For two recent essays that call attention to the complex nature of
medieval and Renaissance ‘objecthood’ and the status of things
in recent literary and historical analysis see Kellie Robertson,
‘Medieval things: materiality, historicism, and the premodern
object’, Literature Compass 5/6 (2008), pp. 1060-180, and Julian
Yates, ‘What are “things” saying in Renaissance studies?’,
Literature Compass 3/5 (2006), pp. 992-1010.

3 Eichberger noted that a list of Margaret of Austria’s paintings
from 1516 employs the term paincture ‘in a rather catholic fashion
encompassing images made in a wide range of techniques’,
including paintings on wood, canvas, and paper, illuminations,
embroidered images and prints, in her talk ‘Cataloguing
Practices for Painting at the Beginning of the Sixteenth-
Century: The Case of Margaret of Austria (1480-1530)’, Annual
Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Los Angeles,
California, 2009. See also her book, Leben mit Kunst, Wirken
durch Kunst. Sammelwesen und Hofkunst unter Margarete von
Österreich, Regentin der Niederlande (Turnhout, 2002).
4 On this woodcut see E. Miller’s essay ‘Prints’, in M. Ajmar-
Wollheim and F. Dennis (eds.), At Home in Renaissance Italy
(London, 2006), pp. 322-3, pl. 22.3 and p. 363, cat. no. 171.
See also A. M. Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut,
with a Detailed Survey of Work done in the Fifteenth Century
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(London, 1935), vol. i, pp.160-62.
5 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Miscellanea di notai diversi,
inventari, b. 36, n. 71, inv. of Leonardo Massari, ducal
secretary (7 November 1538): ‘. . . uno quadro depento de
la adultera soazade de legno de nogara cum foiami et perfili
d’oro.’ Other pictures in Massari’s collection are described less
fully but still with an emphasis on the quality of the frame, for
example ‘uno quadro bello soazado d’oro cum alguni foiami’
(a beautiful picture framed in gold [i.e. gilt wood] with some
foliate carvings).
6 On the GPM see Andrea Da Mosto, L’Archivio di Stato di
Venezia (Rome, 1937), vol. i, pp. 89-91, and M. F. Tiepolo,
Guida generale degli Archivi di Stato italiani, vol. iv (1994),
pp. 987-93. On the MND see ibid., p. 1066. The Giudici di
Petizion also has a series of post-mortem inventories, which
effectively begins in 1580. Only a handful of its inventories
date to earlier in the century.
7 I conducted a complete survey of the c.700 inventories in the
MND series (1497-1630); very few of these inventories date
prior to 1525. I conducted a selective survey of the inventories
in the GPM series limited to the period 1510-1570; in this series
registers for the period from 1514 to [April] 1529 are missing.
8 Two of three volumes related to the project have been
published: L. Borean and S. Mason (eds.), Il collezionismo
d’arte a Venezia. Il Seicento, vol. i (Venice, 2007), and
M. Hochmann, R. Lauber, and S. Mason (eds.), Il collezionismo
d’arte a Venezia. Dalle origini al Cinquecento, vol. ii (Venice,
2008). The digitized catalogue of Venetian collections is
available online through the Getty Project for the Study of
Collecting and Provenance. For more on the Getty Provenance
Index see B. Fredericksen, ‘Il Getty Provenance Index in Italia
e in Francia’, in O. Bonfait, M. Hochmann, L. Spezzaferro,
and B. Toscano (eds.), Geografia del collezionismo. Italia e
Francia tra il xvi e il xviii secolo (Rome, 2001), pp. 377-84.
9 Jestaz compiled a database of 3,644 paintings from the
inventories of the GPM and MND. His findings are
summarized in ‘Les collections de peinture à Venise au
xvie siècle’, in Bonfait et al., op. cit. (note 8), pp. 185-201.
Hochmann has two important essays on Venetian collections:
‘Quelques réflexions sur les collections de peinture à Venise
dans la première moitié du xvie siècle’, in B. Aikema, R. Lauber
and M. Seidel (eds.), Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto
ai tempi della Serenissima (Venice, 2005), pp. 117-34, and ‘Le
collezioni veneziane nel Rinascimento: storia e storiografia’, in
Hochmann et al., op. cit. (note 8), pp. 3-39. Cecchini’s study of
the GPM inventories, ‘Material Culture in Sixteenth-Century
Venice: A Sample from Probate Inventories (1510-1615)’,
 chriscinda henry
Department of Economics Working Paper no. 14, May 2008,
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, is available online. She
uses the same data for her essay, ‘Collezionismo e mondo
materiale’, in Hochmann et al., op. cit. (note 8), pp. 165-91.
10 For a detailed description of these functions and further references
see Cecchini, op. cit. [Material Culture] (note 9), pp. 1-2, and
Cecchini, op. cit. [Collezionismo] (note 9), pp. 177 and 188 n. 66.
11 Tiepolo, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 987-93.
12 Jestaz, who surveyed all inventories in the GPM series registers
1-107 covering the period 1511-1601, counted c.11,000
inventories. I found no GPM inventories assigning monetary
value to artworks for the period 1511-70. Jestaz cites one example,
the 1583 inventory of jeweller Anton Maria Fontana. He owned
paintings identified as by Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Palma
Vecchio, and Jacopo Bassano. See Jestaz, op. cit. (note 9), p. 188.
13 Cecchini, op. cit. [Material Culture] (note 9), p. 5. The
inventories catalogue goods only up to the amount of the dowry
to be restituted, which could include any movable property
left in a household upon the death of the husband, not only
property a wife brought with her at the time of marriage.
14 Cecchini, op. cit. [Material Culture] (note 9), table 1, pp. 13-
14. Cecchini samples the periods 1511-13 (65 % ownership)
and 1560-62 (75 % ownership).
15 Foreigners (German merchants, Greek sailors, etc.) appear
with some frequency in the GPM. In Cecchini, op. cit.
[Material Culture] (note 9), p. 4, the author give a class
breakdown for a sample of GPM inventories from 1610-15.
16 Hochmann notes that in MND b. 38, which corresponds to
the years 1547-53, only 11 of 75 inventories (14.6%) contain
pictures, op. cit. [Quelques réflexions] (note 9), p. 119.
17 Jestaz, op. cit. (note 9), pp. 186-87, and Hochmann, op.
cit. [Quelques réflexions] (note 9), p. 119. The authors cite
statistics for both the MND and GPM fonds.
18 The MND series is characterized as ‘inventari di eredità,
nel caso di eredi minori o assenti’ (inventories concerned
with inheritance, in cases of underage or absent heirs) in
Tiepolo, op. cit. (note 6), p. 1066. On rare occasion the MND
inventories were drawn up by order of the Giudici di Petizion
or Avogadori di Comun.
19 In several MND inventories the friend, relative, or business
partner of the deceased is given as the assessor who took the
inventory in lieu of a notary.
20 For Cecchini’s reservations see op. cit. [Material Culture]
(note 9), p. 1, and op. cit. [Collezionismo] (note 9), p. 189 n. 65.
21 In some documents valuations are given for property more
valuable than paintings (such as jewellery). Exceptional cases
in which paintings are assigned monetary value include MND
b. 38, n. 60, inv. of Michele Veruzzi (7 August – 8 September
1551); b. 39, n. 25, inv. of Cornelio Pesaro, Archbishop of Zara
(6 July 1554); b. 39, n. 29, inv. of Angelo Catena (20 December
1556); b. 39, n. 37, inv. of Carlo da Raspo (6 May 1558); and
b. 39, n. 59, inv. of Pietro Gritti (22 March 1557). On these
and a few further examples see Hochmann, op. cit. [Quelques
réflexions] (note 9), p. 118.
22 Two examples of recent art historical scholarship that make
detailed use of MND evidence are P. Fortini Brown, Private
Lives in Renaissance Venice. Art, Architecture, and the Family
(New Haven and London, 2004), and M. Morse, ‘Creating
sacred space: the religious visual culture of the Renaissance
Venetian casa’, Renaissance Studies 21/2 (2007), pp. 151-84.

23 MND, b. 39, n. 6, inv. of Francesco della Vedova (4 January
1558): ‘quadri erano in la camera grande, uno quadro de
nostra donna grando dorado . . . uno crucifixo de legno picolo’
(pictures that were in the master bedroom, a large picture of
Our Lady with a gilt frame . . . a small wooden crucifix). Here
several crucifixes are listed as quadri because they were found
hanging on the wall.
24 I found four paintings attributed to artists in the MND: (1)
b. 37, n. 14, inv. of Francesco Bon (15 – 17 October 1526),
‘un retratto del morto fatto de má del zudeo’ (a portrait of the
deceased made by the hand of the Jew); (2) b. 37, n.14, inv.
of Vettore, sawyer at the Arsenale (5 June 1543), ‘uno quadro
doro el qual si disse esser di man di zambelin’ (a picture in gold
[i.e. on gold ground or more likely framed in gilt wood], which
is said to be by the hand of Giovanni Bellini); (3) b. 39, n.
18, inv. of Bernardo Francesco (25 March 1556), ‘in la camera
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grande uno quadro della Madonna si dice esser di man di m.
Zuan Bellin’ (in the master bedroom a picture of the Madonna
said to be by the hand of Giovanni Bellini); (4) b. 44, n. 9, inv.
of Alessandro Ram (1 November 1592), ‘un quadro de s. zuane
de Titiano’ (a picture of St. John by Titian). To this list can
be added the 1583 GPM inventory cited by Jestaz, op. cit.
(note 9), n. 11, which also gives valuations.
25 See N. Penny, ‘Introduction: toothpicks and green hangings’,
Renaissance Studies 19/5 (2005), pp. 586-7.
26 Engaged cassetta-type frames, in which painting and frame
are carved from a single piece of wood, are common in the
context of fifteenth-century religious paintings for private
devotion. See T. Newberry, G. Bisacca and L. Kanter, Italian
Renaissance Frames (New York, 1990), pp. 32-5.
27 See Jestaz, op. cit. (note 9), p. 187, and Hochmann, op. cit.
[Quelques réflexions] (note 9), pp. 121-8 for discussion of
themes and examples.
28 A few examples of landscape pictures collected in relatively
large numbers: GPM, b. 21, fol. 68v, inv. of Maria Donato,
widow of Hieronymous Contareno (28 September 1559): ‘un
quadro de nogera di paesi in tella, un quadro con paesi vecchio,
sei quadreti con paesi a stampa’ (a picture with landscape on
canvas [framed with] walnut, an old picture with landscape,
six small printed pictures with landscape); MND, b. 42, n. 4,
inv. of Melchiorre Michele (17 January 1577): ‘diese quadri
de paesi in carta, un quadreto de un paese’ (ten pictures of
landscapes on paper, one small picture of a landscape).
29 GPM, b. 14, fol.189r, inv. of Helisabeth, widow of Guardini
Fabri (30 May 1541): ‘una carta di nostra donna fiaminga;’
MND, b. 39, n. 39, inv. of Giovanni Grandi (29 August 1558):
‘dodese peci de carte depente.’
30 GPM, b. 1, 108r, inv. of Dionora, widow of Leonis di Leone
(10 Sept. 1512): ‘un teller di fiandra cum la sybilla;’ GPM,
b. 2, 224v, inv. of Cristoforo Cappello (24 May 1513): ‘doi
telleri fiandresi depenti su tella;’ MND, b. 34, n. 9, inv of Pietro
Luna (5 November 1523): ‘Un teller quadro . . . d’oro . . . cum
una dona che da teta a un vechio;’ MND, b. 39, n. 58, inv. of
Alvise Oddoni (23 June 1555): ‘un teller di tella soaza figure.’
31 For an example of a Venetian cassetta-type frame for which
the back of the frame served a stretcher for the original canvas
painting see Newberry et al., op. cit. (note 26), p. 88. The back
frame-stretcher is now missing.
32 For example MND b. 37, n. 49, inv. of Gerolamo Zon (20
June 1545): ‘in ditta camera sopra l’orto, uno quadro cum una
figura di Laura Petrarca cum el suo teller di nogera, uno altro
quadreto cum la figura di petrarcha cum el suo fornimento
 what makes a picture?
di nogera; in portego, uno quadro di un a cena del signor
fiamengo . . . un quadro in tella cum tre figure grandi cum
li fornimenti doro, uno altro quadro in tella alla fiammenga
cum il teller dorado cum certi figuri nudi in aqua’ (in the room
above the garden, a picture with a figure of Laura Petrarch
with its walnut frame, another small picture with the figure
of Petrarch with its walnut frame; in the portego, a picture on
canvas in the Flemish style with a gilded frame with certain
nude figures in water). Here teller and fornimento appear to be
used interchangeably.
33 This concept of the teller as both frame and a more complete
‘case’, possibly complete with cover, is suggested in at least
one example: MND, b. 42, n. 32, inv. of Gasparo Segezi (15
May 1576). Here a list of pictures is qualified: ‘tutti essi quadri
con li suoi telleri, over casse’ (all of these pictures with their
frames, or rather cases).
34 For example MND, b. 40, n. 17, inv. of Benedetto Soranzo
(28 February 1563): ‘quatro quadri di nostra donna da camera
di nogera indoradi’ (four chamber pictures of Our Lady in
gilt walnut); GPM, b. 21, fol. 137r, inv. of Helena, widow
of Marco Fachini (9 November 1560): ‘un quadro da camera
fornido de noghera’ (one chamber picture framed in walnut).
35 MND, b. 39, n. 58, inv. of Alvise Oddoni (23 June 1555): ‘uno
quadro di legno dorado con l’apritation della Madonna’ (a
picture of gilt wood with the Annunciation of the Madonna).
36 MND, b. 38, n. 56, inv. of Giovanni Griffalconi (1-4 June
1551): ‘tre quadri miniati in carta pecorina con le soaze de
nogara’ (three miniature paintings on parchment with walnut
frames).
37 MND, b. 43, n. 49, inv. of Giovanni Ambrosio Perlasca (5 – 11
May 1587): ‘uno quadretto da madona di veludo dorado con le
sue soaze d’Sabbano’ (a small picture of the Madonna on gilt
velvet with its frame of Sabbano).
38 MND, b. 38, n. 74, inv. of Vincenzo Pasqualigo (7 June 1553):
‘uno quadro fatto de pezzi de ormesin soazado de nogara con
diverse figure’ (a picture made of pieces of light silk framed in
walnut with various figures).
39 For example: MND, b. 44, n. 9, inv. of Alessandro Ram (1
November 1592): ‘uno [quadro] della Madonna intaglio di
rame’ (a picture of the Madonna engraved in copper); MND,
b. 34, n. 32, inv. of Bernardino De Redaldi (3 December 1526):
‘doi quadri fiandrioti verdi & bianchi con certi gatti et figure
goffe suso’ (two Flemish pictures [in] green and white with
certain cats and foolish/awkward figures on them).
40 The following offer ambiguous examples: GPM, b. 14, fol.
202, inv. of Marieta, widow of Aloysius dij[?]pte (7 July 1541):
‘una armada dipenta su carta’ (an armada painted on paper);
MND, b. 40, n. 27, inv. of Francesco Cigrini (12 November
1562): ‘do quadri de cartha piccoli strazzadi di paesi’ (two
small pictures on paper of landscapes, torn). Here the quadri
could be painted paper, prints, or drawings of landscapes.
41 See note 37.
42 GPM, b. 20, fol. 13v, inv. of Brisieda Segalaria Bon (3 July
1556). Other examples that could be miniature paintings or
prints include: MND, b. 39, n. 58, inv. of Alvise Oddoni (23
June 1555): ‘un quadretto di carta miniada’ (a small picture
of illuminated or printed paper); MND, b. 44, n. 35, inv. of
Vincenzo Mastellari (16 December 1594): ‘sei quadretti miniati
con suoi coverchi de carton’ (six small printed or illuminated
pictures [or miniature paintings] with cardboard covers).

43 MND, b. 44, n. 5, inv. of Lucio Martinello (27 September
1593): ‘nell’antimezado, sette quadretti piccoli con figure
stampate . . . pezzi di figure di rame miniadi per metter sui
quadretti con tella sotto no. 8’ (in the antechamber, seven
small pictures with printed figures . . . pieces of figures in
etched or engraved copper for putting on small pictures with
canvas under, n. 8).
44 MND, b. 39, n. 30, inv. of Lucrezia, widow of Domenico
Soresini (2 November 1554): ‘doi quadreti de intaglio depenti
. . .’ (two small carved or engraved pictures, painted).
45 D. Landau and P. Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550
(New Haven and London, 1994), p. 81.
46 The earliest example I found is MND, b. 37, n. 28, inv. of
Elisabetta Condulmer (16 September 1536): ‘quatro quadreti
de diversi de figure de cartha soazade . . . otto quadreti de
Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Connecticut on May 21, 2015
carte in colade soazadi’ (four small framed pictures of various
figures on paper . . . eight small framed pictures on pasted
paper). These are listed among paintings. A typical later
example is MND b. 40, n. 29, inv. of Domenico de Tauris (29
October 1566): ‘sette quadreti de charta stampada di stampe
de rame con le sue fornimenti de nogara’ (seven small pictures
of printed paper with copper etchings or engravings with
their walnut frames). These are mentioned alongside religious
paintings. MND, b. 41, n. 46, inv. of Andrea Maioli (9 April
1571): ‘in la camera del Testador, un quadro grando de carta
stampada della p[er]sa della golletta cu[m] el suo teler schieto’
(a large picture of printed paper of the death of Goliath with its
broken frame). When prints are grouped with paintings, maps,
mirrors, and other wall-mounted objects as in these cases, it
strongly suggests they are hanging rather than pasted to the
leaves of albums.
47 MND, b. 34, n. 25, inv. of Antonio da Pesaro (1 October
1526): ‘uno mapamondo picollo di tavolla posto.’ This is the
earliest example I found along with 8-10 further examples
of wall-displayed maps, both framed and unframed, and not
indicated as painted on canvas. Some of these two-dimensional
‘mappamondi’ or ‘quadri di mappamondo’ are given as ‘di
carta’ (on paper). Globes are normally distinguished as ‘tonde’
(round), ‘balle’ (balls), or having ‘pie’ (feet).
48 The inventories occasionally confirm this claim directly. For
example MND b. 40, n. 72, inv. of Giorgio Agazi (13 – 16
February 1560): ‘Item a torno il portego un mappamondo in
tella vecchio et un retratto del ditto quon. m. zorzi in tella, et
una donna depenta nuda in uno teler piciolo di tella’ (Items
around [i.e., on the walls] of the portego: an old world map on
canvas, a portrait of the defunct Mr Giorgio on canvas, and a
woman painted nude in a small picture on canvas).
49 One such clear example of prints hanging in a portego: MND,
b. 41, n. 51, inv. of Bartolomeo Baccacci (25 April – 10 May
1572): ‘In portego, uno quadro con suso una stampada in
carta, uno quadro di carta stampada con suso uno pastor, uno
quadreto picolo Inchado alla sema con suso uno papa stampado
in carta’ (In [the] portego, a picture with a print on paper on it,
a picture of printed paper with a shepherd on it, a small picture
glued at the edges with a Pope printed on paper on it).
50 From Miller, op. cit. (note 4), pp. 322-4.
51 For example: b. 40, n. 43, inv. of Angelo dalla Nave (4 - 16
December 1560): ‘tre quadreti soazadi con alguni santi de
charta, quadreti picoli n. 7 con figure de charta de poco
momento’ (three small framed pictures on paper with several
saints, 7 very small pictures on paper with figures of little value).