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Vincenzo Borghini and the Impresa

V INCENZO BORGHINI WAS perhaps the most prolific iconographic adviser of the sixteenth century. From 1560 to 1580, the year of his death, he was a guiding figure in Florentine artistic projects, both permanent and ephemeral.' In addition to composing programmes for monumental schemes Borghini was also frequently commissioned by eminent Florentine patrons, including the Duke himself, to devise small-scale invenzioni for imprese, and his interest in the genre is the subject of this article. Extracts from Borghini's notebooks in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, reveal that several of his invenzioni circulated widely prior to the publication of Giovio's dialogue on imprese. Moreover, Borghini had much to say about contemporary treatises and had firm views on the potential and limitations of visual images for carrying meaning. These critical notes are particularly important. Not only is it rare to find such an articulate statement on the subject among sixteenth-century writers, but as one whose attention was mainly directed towards composing imprese, Borghini's views are refreshingly sensible and practical, especially, as we shall see, when compared with those of his contem-