ABSTRACT
The devotional tradition which favoured interventions and even modernizations on paintings, and more specifically on early works, and the tradition in which respect was shown when treating the works of the great masters, would intertwine and influence one another in various ways throughout the seventeenth century. It is not possible really to trace a line of demarcation between these two traditions, as it would vary according to circumstance: whether the painting was seen as an object of worship and part of the church furnishings, or whether it was characterized as a work of art. Moreover, at what point in that nebulous time which is the Classicism of the end of the fifteenth century can one say that the “good style” (“buono stile”), in all its fullness, began to be recognized?
