01/09/2026
The Burlington Magazine’s autumnal Italian issue focuses on the refulgent glories of sixteenth-century art. We publish documents in French archives that provide a chronology for the movements of Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530) during his time in France in 1518–19. This new evidence supports the proposition that the encounters with major works by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Raphael (1483–1520) that were to be so important for del Sarto’s subsequent career occurred at the court of François I.
The frescos of Lorenzo Sabatini (1530–76) in the Ca****la Paolina in the Vatican, Rome, marked the high point of his artistic achievements. Hitherto no complete study for them has been located; however, a drawing in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, analysed this month can be attributed to the artist and identified as a compositional sketch for his ‘Fall of Simon Magus’ in the ca****la.
Remaining in the context of papal Rome, we publish the recent discovery in the Vatican archives of a record of a 1550 privilege granting papal protection to the architect Sebastiano Serlio (1475–c.1554) for ten years for ‘certain works on architecture and painting’, both in print and yet to be published. This provides new evidence for the workings of this form of copyright and the value of such privileges to authors and printmakers in the sixteenth century.
The September issue also presents a proposal for the origins and fascinating later history of two paintings which formed the wings of a triptych that date from the very early stages of Raphael’s career in Perugia and Città di Castello. This suggests that they may have originated as a commission from a Benedictine convent. In addition, a portrait of a man (c.1560; private collection) is attributed afresh to Bronzino (1503—72).
Reviews this month feature a rich array of exhibitions, including ‘In the Italian Manner: Spain and the Mediterranean Gothic, 1320–1420’ at the Museo del Prado, Madrid, ‘Netherlandish drawings’ at the British Museum, London, ‘James McNeill Whistler’ at Tate Britain, London, ‘Turner: The Enchantment of Lake Como and the Italian Landscape’ at the Pinacoteca Civica di Palazzo Volpi, Como, and the new textiles and carpets galleries at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), Vienna. Meanwhile books appraised range from new studies of magnificent Roman furniture and Carlo Maratti (1625–1713), to Luo Ping and the craft of painting in eighteenth-century China, the cults of Raphael and Michelangelo and British cemeteries.
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