1530-1540<\/p>\n
Vasari, 1568, II, 211 (Vasari-Milanesi, V, 171), in the \u201cLife\u201d of Rosso: \u201c… e fece anco di Minio a q[ue]l Re cose rarissi[me].\u201d<\/p>\n
Kusenberg, 1931, 106, 204, n. 272, cites Le Comte, III, 1702, 12: \u201cIl a fait aussi des merveilles au sujet de la miniature, on en voit quelques pi\u00e8ces dans le cabinet du roi.\u201d\u00a0 B\u00e9guin, in Cox-Rearick, 1972, 3, states that the library of Francis I at Fontainebleau contained \u201cminiatures de Rosso.\u201d\u00a0 Both of these remarks would seem to be dependent upon Vasari\u2019s brief statement.\u00a0 However, no specific miniatures, or illuminated manuscripts, by Rosso were actually identified in the sixteenth century, or later.<\/p>\n
B\u00e9guin, 1960, 46 (ill.), 47, 64, mentioned the lost miniatures by Rosso and suggested that they are reflected in two miniatures of 1549 in the Book of Hours of the Conn\u00e9table de Montmorency in the Mus\u00e9e Cond\u00e9 at Chantilly, which she suggested might be by Geoffroy Dumonstier.1<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 B\u00e9guin also recognized Rosso\u2019s influence on the Francis I as Minerva<\/i> of around 1545 in the Biblioth\u00e8que Nationale, Paris, attributed to Nicolas Belin (see also McAllister Johnson, in EdF<\/i>, 1972, 26 (ill.), 27, no. 27).\u00a0 The wit of the conceit of the latter brings Rosso\u2019s art to mind, but the actual appearance of the miniature is not especially imitative of Rosso\u2019s style.\u00a0 Derivative as the Montmorency illuminations are from Rosso\u2019s style as seen in the decorations of the Gallery of Francis I, the miniatures have a formal and expressive simplicity that seems rather reductive in regard to whatever by Rosso the artist may have studied.\u00a0 One might have a better idea of what any miniatures by Rosso would have looked like from Thiry\u2019s drawings for the Story of Jason and the Conquest of the Golden Fleece<\/i> (Fig.RE.15, 13 Drawing<\/a>) that Boyvin engraved (see RE.15<\/a>), although these drawings are not colored, and tend to be exaggeratedly, even caricaturally, Rossoesque.<\/p>\n But more specifically there is Rosso\u2019s own miniature-like Petrarch drawing at Christ Church (Fig.D.47a<\/a>).\u00a0 Although also uncolored and possibly made as a modello for a tapestry, its format of framed scenes with a text and the precision of its execution probably give a good idea of what an illumination by Rosso would have looked like.<\/p>\n