| Guilio Cesare Mancini from Siena (1558-1630), who worked as personal physician to the Pope, was highly interested in the arts and especially in painting. Among other works he wrote a collection of lives of earlier and contemporary painters. Their number included Domenikos Theotokopoulos and one Lattiano Bonastri, a pupil he had acquired in Rome, who was likewise from Siena. Mancini appears to have obtained his information on the Cretan painter from Bonastri, a few years after Theotokopoulos left for Spain. Relevant passages from Mancini’s work are here published in the Italian original and Greek translation. They provide a vivid description of various aspects of Theotokopoulos’ life in Rome, supplementing and confirming information from other sources. |