Preface

The Catalogues of Rejected Paintings (RP.) and one rejected work of Sculpture (RS.), Rejected Drawings (RD.), and Rejected Prints (RE.) present those works that I think have been wrongly assigned to Rosso in Barocchi’s monograph and in publications thereafter.  The paintings and drawings are listed alphabetically according to the name of the place in which they are found and numbered with the prefixes RP., RS., and RD.  The prints appear alphabetically according to the name of the printmaker, ending with the anonymous works.  Each entry follows the arrangement used for the related catalogues of accepted works. For those works that have already been taken from Rosso, their appearances here indicate my agreement with their rejections by others.  Other rejected works can be found as copies in the catalogues of accepted works. The text of an entry argues against the attribution to Rosso or supports the rejection that has already been made elsewhere.  A rejection by me has been made because the work cannot be sufficiently related to works that are unquestionably by Rosso.  It does not mean only that the quality of the work is too poor to have been done by him, although this can be an aspect of the rejection.  Unfortunately a rejection does not in most cases follow with a secure alternative attribution, or another attribution at all.  If the situation was otherwise and the knowledge of sixteenth century Italian drawings was more extensive, then it is possible that many of these attributions to Rosso would already have been replaced.  However, a rejection here, as distinct from another attribution that I suggest, is not meant as tentative.  Included here are also paintings and drawings wrongly accepted as Rosso’s in Carroll, 1964 (1976), and works that have continued to appear in other publications as his.  A few short print entries deal with attributions to Rosso that can be dismissed with little argument.