I ritratti dei pittori nel manoscritto di Susinno a Basilea: prime indagini

These pages offer a reflection about the portraits of artists in red and black chalk included in Francesco Susinno’s manuscript Le vite de’ pittori messinesi and analyse, through the precious source that the text itself is, the author’s views on drawing and portraiture and the role of the portraits as historical documents. The study of the original volume at the Kupferstichkabinett of the Kunstmuseum in Basel permits us to deal with a series of questions too, concerning the position of the drawings among the manuscript pages and their autography.