ABSTRACT
A major event in Liverpool's cultural history, the sale broke up a pioneering collection of early Renaissance art. Roscoe had assembled the paintings between at least 1804 and 1813 and it was on public display from 1819 in the Liverpool Royal Institution, which he had helped found. This chapter focuses on 12 Italian Renaissance paintings, and one illuminated manuscript cutting, that survive from Roscoe's collection in the Walker Art Gallery (WAG) in Liverpool. It assesses how the Italian paintings related to his admiration for Italy's Renaissance poetry and literature and his fascination with Florence and the Medici, especially Lorenzo the Magnificent and his son Giovanni, the future Leo X. The choir books were made famous by Vasari, who singled out Gherarducci for praise in his life of Lorenzo Monaco. At the sale of the cutting in 1816 Roscoe quoted Vasari extensively, though the lot nevertheless failed to sell.
