«De pictura poesis»: Giulio Roscio, il «Triumphus Martyrum», gli «Emblemata Sacra» (e Torquato Tasso), la «Diana e Callisto»

In Giulio Roscio’s (Orte, ar. 1550 – Milano, 1591) wide and all humanistic literary
production, a particular relevance and meaning assumes the part dedicated to artworks,
both in celebrating Sixtus V Peretti’s archaeological and architectural enterprises, and in
illustrating poetically pictorial creations. This is the case of the thirty-one martyrological
frescoes painted in 1582 by Nicolò Circignani (Pomarancio senior) and Matteo da Siena
in Roman Church of Saint Stefano Rotondo in Mount Celio: their engravings, achieved by
Giovanni Battista de’ Cavalieri, are the sources of the Latin epigrams in Roscio’s «Triumphus
Martyrum in tempo D. Stephani Caelii montis expressus» (Rome 1587 and 1589), to which
are to be associated the «Emblemata sacra S. Stephani Caelii montis intercolumniis affixa»,
created by the establishment of the Jesuit German-Hungarian College and edited by Roscio
(Rome 1589). Both works should be included in the cultural and literary background of the
last Torquato Tasso’s Dialogue, «Il Conte overo de l’imprese» (ed. pr. Naples 1594). A great
value has then a Latin epigram whose witnesses are two issues of an engraving ascribed
to Flemish artist Cornelis Cort, reproducing one of Titian’s two mythological «poems»
commissioned by Philip II of Spain, the «Diana and Callisto». The aim of the present work is
to investigate both literary meanings and cultural impact of Roscio’s poetic creations.