«Arrichita d’altre imagini, discorsi, et esquisita corretione». Giovanni Zaratino Castellini e l’Iconologia di Cesare Ripa

The essay shows the current state of studies on the life and the intellectual activity of Giovanni Zaratino Castellini (1570-1641) and analyzes the contribution that this intellectual has made to Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia. Although known to art historians as the author of an epigram written in praise of the Caravaggio’s Madonna dei Palafrenieri, recently published, only little information had emerged about Castellini, while almost nothing had been studied on his biography and literary activity, closely related to the success of Cesare Ripa’s work. From the 1613 edition to the 1630 edition, he was the author of new allegories and added a large amount of contents to the volume enrich the text with antiquarian, collectible and academic elements. In 1625 Castellini was presented as the editor of the new printing, but his work on Iconologia appears constant and tireless, and represents the apex of his literary activity. Castellini never stopped creating new contents, updating and modifying the Iconologia, until the last edition he edited (Padua, 1630). The study of his biography, of the known texts and of the unpublished texts he produced, rediscovered during this research, allow us to focus more on a little known intellectual, who was a multifaceted scholar, an antiquarian, a collector of epigraphs, an academic and a poet, who lived in close contact with the Roman literary and artistic society of the early seventeenth century.