Barn-Owl painters in St.Peter's in the Vatican, 1604: three mocking poems for Roncalli, Vanni and Passignano (and a note on the breeches-maker)

The article is organized in two parts. The first is based on 3 unpublished poems which the author found in a MS in the BL, London. The author dates and edits the texts and demonstrates that they offer a wide range of new information about the patronage, the date and the reception of the three altarpieces by Vanni, Roncalli and Passignano in St.Peter's. The poems are analysed in the light of another MS held in the Archivio Capitolino, Rome, many passages from that MS have been edited as well since they were still unpublished or misreported, and overall misdated in the precedent literature. The comparison between the two MSS shed new light on the habit of writing mocking texts (generally sonnets or epigrams) on works of art in early modern era. The topic has been mostly neglected in the precedent literature. Therefore, the author analyses the texts in the context of other early modern sources. Being conceived immediately, as soon as a work was shown in public, these texts represent a first-hand account of the reception of works of art in their own time: i.g. one of the sonnet reports a slating comment on Caravaggio which adds a meaningful data to his reception in 1604. The last part of the article concerns a poem addressed to Domenico Carnevali da Modena (in the same MS at the BL), it has previously been published by J. Shearman but with a wrong date and many mistakes in the transcription. The author provides with a new date in the light of the first restoration of Raphael's Isahia in Saint Augustin. The study shows that the famous nickname "braghettone" could be intended to mock Domenico Carnevali as well.