Martino dal Sfriso –mentioned in 1585 in the “Piazza universale” by Tommaso Garzoni as one of the most noteworthy wax sculptors, admired and collected in the following century by Paolo Del Sera, the celebrated merchant, collector and buying agent in Venice of Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici –is identified in the present article as Martino Pasqualigo, the pupil of Leone Leoni. Martino’s name was hitherto known as one who had been assaulted in Venice by a hired assassin sent by Leoni himself, an aggression that left him facially disfigured (“sfregiato”), hence his nickname. Protected by Orazio Vecellio, and a friend of Giovanni Battista Maganza who mentioned him in some of his poems, Pasqualigo enjoyed an undoubted reputation for his works in coloured wax, documented among other things in the Tribune of the Uffizi and in the collection of Leopoldo de’ Medici. Two works formerly in the collection of Paolo Del Sera and of Leopoldo de’ Medici are identified here as the wax representing “Titian with a portrait of his son Orazio” of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and as the “Leda and the Swan” of the Musée National de la Renaissance in Ecouen.
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