Multiple personalities in Francesco Villamena's portrait print of Giovanni Alto dedicated to Cassiano dal Pozzo

Abstract

In August 1622, two months after being admitted to the Accademia dei Lincei, the first modern European scientific society, Cassiano dal Pozzo presented to the academy's president a copy of his recently published book illustrating various bird species and the art of fowling in Italy. It was entitled Uccelliera, overo, discorso della natura, eproprieta di diversi Uccelli. ... Although the contemporary genre scenes with settings and figures were primarily drawn from an earlier publication, the printmaker Francesco Villamena produced a series of new ornithological plates for the volume.1 The naturalistic images, which dal Pozzo later referred to as ritratti, or portraits, accurately depicted the most distinctive features of each species, reflecting a new emphasis on clarity and precision in scientific illustration.2 A little more than a year and a half after the completion of this work, and less than nine months before the artist's death, Villamena dedicated to dal Pozzo a portrait print of the antiquarian Giovanni Alto. The engraved effigy combined the naturalism of the ornithological prints with a variety of other visual elements that skillfully reflected many of the ideas and interests of the dedicatee, the artist's longtime friend and patron (figure I). A careful reconstruction of the genesis of this well-known work and analysis of its constituent parts reveals the printmaker's ability to represent not only the physical likeness of the sitter, but also his desire to portray aspects of the intellectual personality of the individual to whom the engraving is dedicated. Such a complex image highlights the limits of traditional notions about the immediate association between appearance and identity in portraiture.3

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