Late 1529 and early 1530<\/p>\n
After writing of the execution in Borgo Sansepolcro of the Christ in Glory<\/i> for Citt\u00e0 di Castello (P.20<\/a>), Vasari (1550, 802-803) went on to say: \u201cIn quel medesimo tempo che tal cosa faceva, disotterr\u00f2 de\u2019morti nel vescovado, ove stava, & fece una bellissima notomia\u201d (the same in Vasari, 1568, II, 109; Vasari-Milanesi, V, 166).\u00a0 This period was between September 1529, when he fled Arezzo, and April 1530, when he departed for Venice.\u00a0 The bishop\u2019s palace was then still occupied by Rosso\u2019s friend Bishop Leonardo Tournabuoni, who had earlier received the artist when he arrived in Sansepolcro from Perugia after the Sack of Rome and painted the Piet\u00e0<\/i> in San Lorenzo (P.19<\/a>).<\/p>\n Kusenberg, 1931, 38, noted Vasari\u2019s comment that Rosso studied from dead bodies.\u00a0 Kellett (1957, 329-330, and 1958, 6) translated Vasari\u2019s passage as indicating that Rosso made \u201cfine anatomical studies,\u201d which, again according to Kellett, formed a \u201cbook of anatomical designs,\u201d which he took to France where they were to serve as the models for the plates of a book on anatomy that Rosso planned to have printed there (see L.60<\/a>).\u00a0 Mayor, 1984, 50, 94, accepted Kellett\u2019s history.\u00a0 But Kornell, 1989, 842, questioned this connection, which Vasari himself had not made, adding that the word \u201cnotomia\u201d or \u201canotomia\u201d in the sixteenth century need not have meant a book of anatomy.\u00a0 She concluded that Vasari\u2019s \u201cuna bellissima notomia\u201d is probably a reference to a single finished drawing.\u00a0 She pointed out (846, and ns. 26 and 31) that Rosso\u2019s Disputation of the Angel of Death and the Devil<\/i>\u00a0(Fig.D.1a<\/a>), engraved by Agostino Veneziano (Fig.E.109a<\/a>), was referred to by Vasari as \u201cuna notomia\u201d and that Rosso\u2019s Fury<\/i> engraved by Caraglio (Fig.E.18a<\/a>) was described as a \u201cnotomia secca.\u201d\u00a0 Kornell thought that the Fury<\/i> \u201cmay be a direct reflection of Rosso\u2019s early anatomical experience, in parts seeming to be an \u00e9corch\u00e9<\/i>,\u201d as had also been suggested by Franklin, 1988, 326, no. 8, and implied by Davis, 1988, 71.\u00a0 Franklin, 1988, 326, also thought Rosso\u2019s study in the Albertina (Fig.D.26A<\/a>) was made from a corpse.\u00a0 Ciardi and Mugnaini, 1991, 19-20, 52, recognized Rosso\u2019s study of anatomy in the Disputation of the Angel of Death and the Devil<\/i>, and in the figure of St. Jerome in the S. Maria Nuova Altarpiece (Fig.P.5f<\/a>).\u00a0 Costamagna, 1994, 36, 95, ns. 21-24, discussed the modification of the human canon in Rosso\u2019s S. Maria Nuova Altarpiece (and in his red chalk\u00a0Disputation<\/i>\u00a0[D.1<\/a>]) in the context of the hospital of S. Maria Nuova and its chiostro delle ossa<\/i> and his study of cadavers and \u00e9corch\u00e9s<\/i>, suggesting that Buonafede, the director of the hospital who commissioned the altarpiece of 1518, encouraged Rosso to make dissections.<\/p>\n Kornell may well be right in recognizing that only one drawing is meant by Vasari\u2019s \u201cbellissima notomia.\u201d\u00a0 But Rosso\u2019s study of the bodies he dug up at the bishop\u2019s palace would probably have produced a number of drawings and these would then have provided the information for the supposed one \u201cbellissima notomia.\u201d\u00a0 And \u201cthat entire experience,\u201d to quote a letter from Kornell, \u201cwould have served him well for the later book of anatomy.\u201d\u00a0 One should probably leave open the possibility that the \u201cbellissima notomia\u201d done in Borgo Sansepolcro from Rosso\u2019s study and drawings of cadavers came to be created within a framework of intentions for a book of anatomy, even if Vasari knew of only one finished drawing.\u00a0 If there was only one it could, of course, have been made for or, in any case, used in that book.1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n