Supper of St. Gregory, after a drawing by Napoleone Angiolini of Giorgio Vasari’s Supper of St. Gregory, Guilio Tomba

Exhibition Label: "Giorgio Vasari and Court Culture in Late Renaissance Italy," Sep-2012, Sally Cornelison and Susan Earle In 1539 Vasari painted the Supper of St. Gregory (pictured below) for the refectory of the Olivetan monastery of San Michele in Bosco, Bologna. Engraved after Vasari’s painting in the early 19th century, this print depicts St. Gregory the Great, an early pope known for regularly welcoming twelve paupers to dine with him. On this occasion, Christ himself was among the impoverished guests. Vasari gave the seated figure of St. Gregory at bottom left the features of Pope Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici, r. 1523-34). He also included a likeness of the pope’s probable illegitimate son and Florence’s first duke, Alessandro de’ Medici (circa 1510-37), who stands behind Clement VII. The pope’s tasseled chair, which Vasari repurposed from the chair in Raphael’s portrait of the first Medici pope, Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici, r. 1513-21), has a spherical finial that references the distinctive palle, or balls, on the Medici family’s coat of arms.