the prophet armed

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The Prophet Armed: Machiavelli, Savonarola, and Rosso Fiorentino's Moses Defending theDaughters of JethroAuthor(s): Vivien GastonSource: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 51 (1988), pp. 220-225Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/751278 .

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220 NOTES AND DOCUMENTSMarcantonio's version. Thus, although itpresents itself as a sophisticated example oflate sixteenth-century reproductive engrav-ing, Matham's print still retains importantelements of interpretative licence. In hisApollo and Marsyas (P1. 30a) Sanuto was, aswe have seen, quite explicit about thefreedom he was taking, joining together twodifferent images and inscribing theborrowing-deliberately forcing the person'reading' the picture to consider thecombination and its derivation. This processis altogether different from the kind ofubiquitous artistic borrowing of gesturesand poses that artists indulged in, andusually tried to disguise. We can here recallCoxie's dismay that the publication of aprint should expose the dependence onRaphael of his Death of the Virgin altarpiece(P1. 33b).For Frbart engraving was essentially amechanical art, to be judged by the stan-dards of its accuracy. He praises the infor-mational value of prints and laments thatthey were not known in the past, for if thepaintings described by Philostratus hadbeen engraved in antiquity they would nodoubt have spoken more eloquently thanhis words.70 Nevertheless he clearly dis-tinguishes in his Preface between the'curieuses' prints by Marcantonio which heprefers and which provide his first threeexamples for discussion, and the School ofAthens engraving which he judges lessvaluable, not only because it is icono-graphically confusing, but because it is by a'less excellent hand than the precedingones'.71Frrart and Bellori provided a challenge tothe authority of Vasari's interpretation ofthe School of Athens which was widelyaccepted. It was repeated, for example byJonathan Richardson, who in 1722 wrote: 'Icannot pass by an instance of Vasari's Care-lessness, and Luxuriant manner of Writ-ing'.72 But the points which they establishedwere gradually lost again in the course oftime, even though Vasari himself had

elsewhere-in the Life of Perino-de-scribed the Stanza della Segnatura in simi-larly straightforward terms.73 Bellori's expla-nation of the transposition of the mathema-tician into the Evangelist74 is more subtlethan Freart's suggestion of crass ignoranceon the part of Ghisi, but it does not reallyrecognize that the seventeenth-centuryconception of the reproductive engravingdid not exist in the 1520s. AgostinoVeneziano did not conceive his engraving of'St Luke and the Evangelists' (P1. 34a)primarily as a reproductive image; it wassimply that in the course of time his print,and others like it, came to be viewed withthis assumption, and as a result used forpurposes which would have surprised theengraver.JEREMY WOODOXFORD POLYTECHNIC

70 Freart, pp. 106-7.71 'La gravfire n'en est pas de si bonne main que celledes precedentes': Freart, from the close of the un-paginated preface.72 Richardson[s] (as in n. 37), p. 220 (from theaccount of the Parnassus); for the School of Athens, seepp. 209-10.

73 ee above, n. 50.7 See above, n. 45.

THE PROPHET ARMEDMACHIAVELLI, SAVONAROLA, AND

ROSSO FIORENTINO'S MOSESDEFENDING THE DAUGHTERSOFJETHRO*

THE SINGULARITY of Rosso Fiorentino'sI Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro inthe Uffizi, dated c. 1523 (P1. 29a), is undis-puted. Little attention, however, has beengiven to its violent interpretation of a rarelydepicted incident from Exodus.1* I wish to thank Lorenzo Polizzotto, Margaret

Manion, Margaret Plant, Charles Dempsey and F.W.Kent for their generous advice and encouragement.1 The iconography of Rosso's painting has beendiscussed by J. Peluso ('Rosso Fiorentino's Mosesdefend-ing theDaughtersofJethroand its Pendant: their RomanProvenance and Allegorical Symbolism', MitteilungendesKunsthistorischenInstitutes in Florenz, xx, 1976, pp.87-106), who finds its sources in the reaction of artiststo the contrasting patronage of Popes Adrian VI andClement VII; and G. Smith ('Mosesand theDaughtersofJethroby Rosso Fiorentino', Pantheon,xxxv, 1977, pp.198-204), who believes the painting is influenced byJournal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume 51, 1988

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MACHIAVELLI, SAVONAROLA AND ROSSO 221Apart from those in earlier manuscriptcycles,2 the only surviving previous exampleis Botticelli's fresco of the early 1480s in theSistine Chapel. Here the defence of thedaughters is merely one episode in a con-tinuous narrative and in this respect closely

follows the Biblical text (Exodus IX. 15-17,19).Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dweltin the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well.Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters:and they came and drew water, and filled thetroughs to water their father's flocks. And theshepherds came and drove them away:but Mosesstood up and helped them, and watered theirflock.The daughters tell their father how 'AnEgyptian delivered us out of the hand of theshepherds, and also drew water enough forus, and watered the flock'.In both text and fresco the emphasis is onthe gentle care shown by Moses in wateringthe sheep, whereas Rosso focuses exclusivelyon the conflict, creating a whirlpool of viol-ent action. Moses is at its centre, Herculeanin his aggressive strength, heroic nudity anddistinctly 'leonine' face and hair.3

Graham Smith drew attention to theworks of Philo Judaeus as a source for thepainting,4 but did not discuss Philo's in-terpretation of the actual defence ofJethro'sdaughters in De vita Mosis-... Moses, who was not far off, seeing what hadhappened, quickly ran up and, standing nearby,said: 'Stop this injustice. You think you can takeadvantage of the loneliness of this place. Are younot ashamed to let your arms and elbows live anidle life? You are masses of long hair and lumpsof flesh, not men. The girls are working likeyouths, and shirk none of their duties, while youyoung men go daintily like girls ... In me at leastit [the heavenly eye of justice] has appointed achampion whom you did not expect, for I fightto succour these injured maidens, allied to amighty arm which the rapacious may not see, butyou shall feel its invisible power to wound if youdo not change your ways ... '5For Philo the role of Moses is no longerjust deliverance, but chastisement. As inthe painting, Moses is a 'champion' employ-ing his superior strength to punish withrighteous anger.Yet Girolamo Savonarola presents a read-ing of the incident which corresponds evenmore closely with the aggressive demon-stration of power in Rosso's painting. ToSavonarola, Moses was the 'greatest ofprophets',6 representing not only spiritualbut also political virtue. He believed that theFlorentines were 'latter day Israelites'7 whowould be led out of their tribulations by a

the revival of works of Philo Judaeus. It is generallyassumed that the Moses had a pendant painting, Rebeccaand Eliezerat the Well,now lost but known through acopy in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo in Pisa andthrough drawings based on it by Salviati and Vasari. Therelationship between the two is maintained byJ. Pelusoand E. Carroll (The Drawings of RossoFiorentino, I, NewYork 1976, p. 479) on the grounds of their strikingstylistic similarities and because Vasari mentions themconsecutively. Smith (p. 203) draws only an icono-graphical comparison. Yet obvious difficulties inproving that they are pendants are present in Vasari'sidentification of a different patron for each, and evenof a different destination for each commission: theMoses or France and the Rebecca nd Eliezer or England;G. Vasari, Le Vite,ed. G. Milanesi, v, Florence 1906, p.159. That the early provenance for both is uncertainadds to the problem of relating them. Little attentionhas been given to the patron of the Rebecca,GiovanniCavalcanti, on whom there is some documentation,although mostly of a mercantile nature. MargaretMitchell describes him as 'a wealthy Florentine mer-chant who did business with both Henry VIII and PopeLeo' ('Works of Art from Rome for Henry VIII. A studyof Anglo-Papal Relations as Reflected in Papal Gifts tothe English King', thisJournal,xxxiv, 1971, pp. 186-7).2 See Smith (as in n. 1), pp. 198, 200 and figs 2-7,9-10.* On the suitability of leonine physiognomy forHercules, see P. Meller, 'Physiognomical Theory inRenaissance Heroic Portraits', in Renaissanceand Man-nerism Acts of the Twentieth International Congress ofArt), II, Princeton 1963, p. 59. The fundamental sourceof Rosso's bounding figure of Moses is the antique

image of a man overcoming a bull which was also usedfor depictions of the exploits of Hercules, as analysedby Fritz Saxl (A Heritage of Images, eds H. Honour and J.Fleming, Harmondsworth 1970, pp. 17-21). For theidentification of Herculean strength with Christianvirtue see M. Simon, Hercule et le Christianisme, Paris1955; C. Eisler, 'The Athlete of Virtue: The Icon-ography of Asceticism', in De artibus opuscula XL. Essaysin Honor ofErwin Panofsky, ed. M. Meiss, New York 1961,pp. 82-97; and L. D. Ettlinger, 'Hercules Florentinus',Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, xvi,1972, pp. 119-42.4 Smith (as in n. 1), p. 202. For evidence of therevival of Philo Judaeus in 15th-century Rome, Smithhas drawn on L. D. Ettlinger, The Sistine Chapel beforeMichelangelo, Oxford 1965, pp. 116-17. See also E.Goodenough, 'Mention of Philo in Printed Books ofthe Fifteenth Century', The Politics ofPhiloJudaeus, NewHaven 1938, p. 308.5 Philo, Moses, I, trs. F. H. Colson in Philo, Works,Loeb Classical Library, vi, London 1935, p. 305.6 G. Savonarola, Prediche sopra Ezechiele, Rome 1955, i,Predica xx, p. 254: 'Moyses, massimo de' profeti'.7 D. Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence, Princeton1970, p. 183.



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222 NOTES AND DOCUMENTSnew Moses.8 This fusion of politics andtheology is especially apparent in his eighthsermon on Exodus, in which he dealsspecifically with the defence of Jethro'sdaughters and transforms the Biblical textinto far more brutal rhetoric:... Moses comes and defends the girls. Et defensispuellis, adaquavitoves earum:Moses defends themfrom the shepherds and gives water to the sheep.Moses deals heavy blows to those shepherdsand says: why do you not want these girls to watertheir sheep?-Here are the blows: you prelateand priest, leave your concubines, young boysand gluttony, give up your ostentation and yourdogs. You are those who do not work at all in theLord's vineyard; you tear up and consume thingsfrom this vineyard and in your pride do not evenwant others to live well ... Oh Moses, you givegreat blows-leave the girls alone and the soulsof Christ and let the sheep drink ... Did I not tellyou that you have to fight, with clean weapons.Sometimes there is a need, when the time isright, to give blows and to uncover [the truth?]9Savonarola shapes the encounter into aviolent battle through which he can projecthis view of the Florentine clergy: thedaughters are the good priests and monkswho minister to their flock and the badshepherds are the corrupt priests andcanons who lead them astray. Moses defendsthe daughters by attacking the bad priestswith a new vehemence, with 'great blows'(grande mazzate), symbolizing moral accu-sations that reveal their dissolute way of life.The sermon reflects the widely felt outragewith declining morals in the church, whichwas often accompanied by apocalypticvisions of a Florence chastised before itsspiritual renewal.10 Above all Savonarolapreaches in his own defence, virtuallyidentifying himself with Moses. ThroughMoses he is able to make his attack on thepriests who were trying to undermine hisinfluence in Florence and who supportedhis excommunication by Alexander VI.11This message of personal outrage leadsSavonarola to exaggerate the aspect of

violent chastisement in the story in a waywhich closely compares with Rosso'spainting.12In the early sixteenth century this politi-cized vision of Moses took on a new theor-etical strength in the works of Niccol6Machiavelli.3 In his youth he had beenpresent at Savonarola's sermon on Exodusand had even recorded his reaction in aletter to Ricciardo Becchi of 9 March 1498:Because, fearing greatly for himself and believingthat the new Signoria would not be hesitantabout harming him ... he began with greatterrors ... showing that his followers werethe best of men and his adversaries the mostwickedThe next morning, again still explainingExodus and coming to that passage where it issaid that Moses killed an Egyptian, he said thatthe Egyptian stood for wicked men, and Mosesfor the preacher who killed them by revealingtheir vices, and he said: 'O Egyptian! I am goingto give you a stab'. And then he turned the leavesof your books, O priests, and made such a messof you that a dog would have turned away fromyou. Then he added-and this was obviouslywhere he was heading-that he wanted to givethe Egyptian another wound and a big one; andhe said that God had told him that a man inFlorence was trying to make himself a tyrant ...and that his attempt to drive out the Frate ...came to nothing else than that he wanted tomake himself a tyrant ...14

8 See G. Schnitzer, Savonarola,Milan 1931, II, p. 219.9 G. Savonarola, Prediche opra 'Esodo,Florence 1955,i, Predica viii, pp. 230-3.10 See M. Reeves, TheInfluence of Prophecyn the LaterMiddleAges,Oxford 1969, pp. 429-52; Weinstein (as inn. 7), passim; and C. Vasoli, 'Profezie e profeti nella vitareligiosa e politica fiorentina', in Magia, AstrologiaeReligionenelRinascimento,Warsaw1974.11 P. Villari, Life and Times of GirolamoSavonarola,London 1889, II, pp. 187-90.

12 For Savonarola's posthumous influence as a focusfor Republican sympathies see Schnitzer (as in n. 8), II,pp. 463-503; Weinstein (as in n. 7), pp. 317-73; F.Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini:Politicsand Historyin 16th CenturyFlorence,Princeton 1965, pp. 144-50;and the forthcoming book by L. Polizzotto on thePiagnoni, 1494-1545. It is pertinent that Panofskyinterpreted an early drawing by Rosso as incorporatingSavonarolan sympathies: 'Mors Vitae Testimonium.Thepositive Aspect of Death in Renaissance and BaroqueIconography', in Studien zur Toskanischen Kunst.Festschriftiir Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich, ds W. Lotzand L. M611er,Munich 1964, pp. 232-6.13 For Savonarola's influence on Machiavelli's repub-licanism see C. Clough, MachiavelliResearches,Naples1967, pp. 14 and 44.14 ... perch6 dubitando egli forte di sb, et credendoche la nuova Signoria fussi al nuocergli inconsiderata,.. cominci6 con spaventi grandi ... mostrando essereoltimi e'sua seguaci, et gli adversari scelleratissimi ..L altra mattina poi exponendo pure lo Exodo etvenendo a quella parte, dove dice che Moyses amaz6uno Egiptio, dixe che lo Egiptio erono gli huominicaptivi, et Moyses il predicatore che gli amazava,scoprendo e' vitii loro; et dixe: O Egiptio, io ti vo' dareuna coltellata; et qui cominci6 a squadernare e' librivostri, o preti, e tractarvi in modo che non n'hareb-bono mangiato e' cani; dipoi soggiunse, et qui lui



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MACHIAVELLI, SAVONAROLA AND ROSSO 223Machiavelli was impressed by both theboldness and the cunning of Savonarola'sattack on his enemies through manipulativerhetoric.15 The letter shows Machiavelli'searly consideration of issues, in particularthe use of force for political ends, that wereamong his central concerns in the 1510swhen he came to write The Prince and theDiscourses on the First Decade of Livy. Theywere issues for which he found Mosesparticularly relevant and the example ofSavonarola highly enlightening. In DiscoursesIII, 30, he wrote:He who reads the Bible intelligently sees that ifMoses was to put his laws and regulations intoeffect, he was forced to kill countless men who,moved by nothing else but envy, were opposed tohis plans ... This necessity was well recognized byFrate Girolamo Savonarola. It was also recog-nized by Piero Soderini, the Gonfalonier ofFlorence. The first (namely the Frate) could notovercome envy because he did not have powerenough and because he was not well understoodby his followers who did have power ... 16For Machiavelli, Moses possessed theforceful will and capacity for ruthless actionessential to a leader. His belief in the

necessity of these qualities grew out of hisown experience of the failure of the Flor-entine Republic'7 and is even more evidentin The Prince which, although not publisheduntil 1532, was widely circulated in the1520s.'8But coming to those who through their ownability and not through Fortune have beentransformed into princes, I say that the mostadmirable are Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseusand the like.19Consideration of the qualities required tointroduce and maintain new institutions isthe occasion for one of Machiavelli's bestknown formulations, and again Moses is thefirst choice as exemplar:... but when they (the innovators) depend ontheir own resources and are strong enough tocompel, then they are seldom in danger. This isthe reason why all armed prophets win, andunarmed ones fall. Because ... the people are bynature variable; to convince them of a thing iseasy; to hold them to that conviction is hard.Therefore a prophet must be ready, when theyno longer believe, to make them believe by force.Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus could nothave gained long-continued observance for theirconstitutions if they had been unarmed. In ourtimes Fra Girolamo Savonarola was unarmed;hence he was destroyed amid his institutionswhen they were still new ... 2oSignificantly, the 'armed prophet' epit-omizes the primary quality for whichSavonarola and Philo praised Moses: boldaction as opposed to 'effeminate' passivity.

voleva capitare, che volea dare all'Egiptio un'altra feritaet grande, et dixe che Dio gli haveva detto, ch'egli erauno in Firenze che cercava di farsi tyranno, ... e chevolere cacciare el frate, ... non voleva dire altro se nonche volere fare un tyranno ...'. Machiavelli, Lettere, d.F. Gaeta, Milan 1961, pp. 30, 32-33. Translated by A.Gilbert in The Lettersof Machiavelli,New York 1961, pp.85-8.15 For Machiavelli's debt to Savonarola in general seeJ. H. Whitfield, 'Savonarola and the Purpose of thePrince', The ModernLanguage Review,XLIV,1949, pp.44-59; G. Sasso, NiccoloMachiavelli,storia delsuo pensieropolitico, Naples 1958, pp. 9-18; and D. Weinstein,'Machiavelli and Savonarola', in Studies on Machiavelli,ed. M. Gilmore, Florence 1972, pp. 251-64. Machi-avelli's respect for Savonarola's intellect is evident inDiscourses, 45 where he refers to the Frate's writings asshowing 'la dottrina, la prudenza e la virthi ello animosuo': Machiavelli, II Principee Discorsisoprala prima decadi TitoLivio,ed. S. Bertelli, Milan 1960, p. 233.16 'E chi legge la Bibbia sensatamente vedr Moishessere stato forzato, a volere che le sue leggi e che lisuoi ordini andassero innanzi, ad ammazzare infinitiuomini, i quali non mossi da altro che dalla invidia siopponevano a' disegni suoi. Questa necessitAconoscevabenissimo frate Girolamo Savonarola; conoscevalaancora Piero Soderini, gonfaloniere di Firenze. L'unonon potette vincerla per non avere autoritA a poterlofare (che fu il frate) e per non essere inteso bene dacoloro che 1o seguitavano, che ne arebbero avutoautorita ...'. Discorsi, ii, 30; IIPrincipee Discorsi(as in n.15), p. 468. Machiavelli, The ChiefWorks nd Others, rs.A. Gilbert, Durham, NC 1965 (hereafter ChiefWorks),I,pp. 496-7.

1 TheDiscoursesof NiccoloMachiavelli, trs. L. Walker,introd. C. Clough, London 1950, I,pp. 38-40.18 Ibid., p. 53. ThePrincehad already been plagiarizedand published in a 'mutilated form' by Agostino Nifo in1523 (loc. cit.).19 'Ma, per venire a quelli che per propria virtii e nonper fortuna sono diventati principi, dico che li pitieccellenti sono Moish,Ciro, Romulo, Teseo e simili', IlPrincipe as in n. 15), vi, p. 30; ChiefWorksas in n. 16),p.25.20 '... ma, quando dependono da loro proprii epossano forzare, allora 6 he rare volte periclitano. Diqui nacque che tutt'i profeti armati vinsono, e lidisarmati ruinorono. Perche ... la natura de' populi 6varia; et 6 facile a persuadere loro una cosa, ma 6difficile fermarli in quella persuasione. E per6 convieneessere ordinato in modo, che quando non credono piui,si possa fare credere loro per forza. Moish,Ciro, Teseoe Romulo non arebbono possuto fare osservare lorolungamente le loro constituzioni, se fussino stati dis-armati; come ne' nostri tempi intervenne a fra'Girolamo Savonarola; il quale ruin6 ne' sua ordininuovi ...'. II Principe(as in n. 15), vi, p. 32; ChiefWorks(as in n. 16), pp. 26-7.



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XANTO AND PETRARCH 225In a letter written while imprisoned inNaples by the Spanish, as hostage for PopeClement VII, he writes:I continually read Livy and the Politics ofAristotle, and from the former I think one canderive the practice, and from the latter thetheory for man as a good and virile citizen.30

Finally, not only the patron but alsothe artist may have been acquainted withMachiavelli, as indicated by a neglectedportrait attributed to Rosso (P1. 29b).31The sources here discussed demonstratethe continuity of thought which harnessedathletic imagery to moral concepts. ForPhilo this simply pertained to the life of thespirit, while for Savonarola the athleticmetaphor could be used to bind togetherreligious duty and political action. Thisbond was fundamental to Savonarola's life, alife which provided Machiavelli with con-spicuous evidence to bolster his belief in theneed for a more drastic conflation of virilityand virtue, exemplified in the conceptof the armed prophet. Rosso's disturb-ingly violent contribution transforms theheroic image of Moses in the light of thisMachiavellian ideal, the obscure incident atMidian now demonstrating political as wellas spiritual strength.VIVIEN GASTON

UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

30 Letter to Battista della Palla and Zanobi Buon-delmonti dated 30 January 1526, in MS cited in n. 26above, fols 19r-21v. It is possible that Rosso's depictionof Moses, dated 1523, had a further political sig-nificance: to celebrate Giulio de' Medici's election asPope on 18 November 1523. Bandini was later to fightin the service of Clement and win great favour at thepapal court: Devonshire-Jones (as in n. 28), p. 160. Heis mentioned in letters written by Vettori for Clement innegotiations for peace with the Imperialists in 1526:Nardi (as in n. 22), p. 273. Significantly, in hisexhortatory last chapter of The Prince, Machiavelli callson the Medici family to make itself the leader of Italy's'redenzione' and compares its task with that of Moses:'E se, come io dissi, era necessario volendo vedere lavirtii di Moist, che il populo d'Isdrael fussi stiavo inEgitto ... cosi al presente, volendo conoscere la virtud'uno spirito italiano, era necessario che la Italia siriducessi nel termine che ell'b di presente, e che la fussipiui stiava che li Ebrei ...'; II Principe (as in n. 15), xxvI,p. 102.31 This painting, whose present whereabouts areunknown to me, was in the 1950's with Agnew's,London, where it was attributed to Rosso. I know it onlyfrom a photograph in the Witt Library of the CourtauldInstitute, filed under 'Rosso'.

FRANCESCO XANTO AVELLIAND PETRARCH*

VER THE LAST FEW DECADES much attentionhas been paid to the visual sources ofthe majolica painter Francesco XantoAvelli.1 Relatively little interest has beenshown in the literature that may haveinspired his paintings or the inscriptions heused to describe them.2 This is somewhatsurprising: Xanto is known to have hadliterary aspirations3 and many of his inscrip-tions are lines of poetry. Four inscriptionson works of 1531 and 1532 refer to Ariosto;4

* My thanks are due in particular to Timothy Wilson,who first brought this subject to my attention, andwithout whose continued support this Note wouldnever have been completed.The following abbreviations are used throughout:Ballardini: G. Ballardini, Corpus della MaiolicaItaliana, 2 vols, Rome 1933-1938.Giacomotti: J. Giacomotti, Catalogue des majoliques desmuskes nationaux, Paris 1974.Petrarch: Petrarch, Canzoniere: Testo critico e intro-duzione di Gianfranco Contini, Turin 1964.Rackham: B. Rackham, Catalogue of Italian Maiolica,2 vols, London, Victoria and AlbertMuseum, 1940.Wilson: T. H. Wilson, Ceramic Art of the ItalianRenaissance, cat. exh., London, BritishMuseum 1987.

1 Joan Prentice von Erdberg, 'Early works by FraXanto Avelli da Rovigo in the Walters Art Gallery',Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, xIII, 1950, p. 31;Giacomotti, no. 68, p. 270; Marisi Bonomi, 'Fontiiconografiche delle maioliche di F.X.A.', Commentari, x,1959, pp. 190-5; A. V. B. Norman, 'Sources of Designon a Maiolica Dish', Apollo, LxxxI, 1965, pp. 460-3; F.Liverani, 'Una maiolica dell'Avelli e le sue fonti icono-grafiche', Faenza, LxvI, 1980, pp. 297-9; J. Petruzellis-Scherer, 'Fonti iconografiche librarie per alcune mai-oliche del Castel Sforzesco', Castello Sforzesco, Rassegna diStudi et di Notizie, x, 1982, pp. 373-85.2 Guy de Tervarent, o'Enquate sur le sujet des maj-oliques', Kunstmuseets Arsskrift, xxxvII, 1950, pp. 1-48;D. Ballardini Napolitani, 'Ispirazione e fonti letterarienell'opera di Francesco Xanto Avelli pittore su maiolicain Urbino', La Rinascita, II, 1940, pp. 905-22.3 Guido Vitaletti, 'Le rime di Francesco XantoAvelli', Faenza, vi, 1918, pp. 11-15, 41-4. See now F.Cioci, Xanto e il Duca di Urbino, Milan 1987, whichappeared after this Note had been written.(i) Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum C10-1953: J. C.Robinson, Catalogue of the Special Exhibition ... at theSouth Kensington Museum, London 1863, no. 5247; (ii)London, British Museum: Ballardini II, no. 53, figs 50,252R; and Wilson, no. 222; (iii) London, Victoria andAlbert Museum: Rackham, no. 724; and Ballardini II,no. 65, figs 62, 257R. The fourth, dated 1531, is in the

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume 51, 1988



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4"'

PhotoAlinari

Fiorentino, Moses Defending theDaughters ofJethro (pp. 220-25)

b-Attributed to Rosso Fiorentin(present whereabouts unknown)

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the prophet armed

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