Portrait of Girolamo Ruscelli

This portrait of the humanist and cartographer Girolamo Ruscelli in a fleshy arch of winged glory is likely posthumous, as the use of the profile and the poem engraved beneath suggest. The illegible tomes covering the lower angels’ nether regions may reference the Book of Secrets Ruscelli wrote under an assumed name. He claimed that its contents—including recipes for alchemical compounds, cosmetics, dyes, and medicines—stemmed from experiments carried out by his “Academy of Secrets” in Naples in the 1540s. The work’s mystique translated favorably into numerous languages and it was reprinted as late as the eighteenth century.