ABSTRACT
Cesare Gonzaga’s correspondence files are not the only source for information about his collection for there are also the 1575 inventory and the accounts by Giorgio Vasari and Ulisse Aldrovandi. There is some overlapping but little actual duplication in these texts, as both Vasari and Aldrovandi’s descriptions of the collection contain information not found in the inventory, while Baccusi’s mention of Cesare’s naiuralla adds an otherwise undocumented dimension to the collection. The three-hundred-page 1679 inventory of the possessions of the Gonzaga of Guastalla is preceded by two less comprehensive listings: the fragments of the accounting made in 1575 upon the death of Cesare Gonzaga, and the seventy-two-page “Inventarium bonorum mob ilium” of 1590. The notation “bis” or letters have been added in the absence of numbering in the original. The scribe was not consistent in his spelling of “imperatore,” which frequently appears as “inperatore”.
