The Tabernacle of the Sacrament in the Oratory of S. Carlino, Ravenna (Fig.1), has encountered more than just neglect. Moved and readapted to diverse functions, it is missing several elements and has suffered from rough handling in its edges and its surface. For years the oratory in which it is now immured was closed and the monuments inside, therefore, inaccessible. A recent work on renaissance sculpture in Ravenna allots to it a single sentence,' while guidebooks to Ravenna often fail to mention it or the oratory at all. Attempts to attribute it have been few and feeble; indeed, neither its composition nor its style has been seen to merit scholarly attention. Yet not only is it a highly original solution to the problem of the conservation of the host, but it proves to be a very early work by the Venetian sculptor, Giambattista Bregno.

While fifteenth-century Florentine portrait busts have long been the focus of art-historical study, their sixteenth-century successors have been much less closely examined.' The particular aspect of the subject broached in the present article is the use of portrait busts in Florentine tombs and monuments, a phenomenon which has not hitherto been considered as a whole. One reason for this neglect is that some of the most important objects have been lost or moved from their original locations, resulting in a corresponding loss of prominence.

Vsari's account of Danese Cattaneo, included in the bio- graphy ofJacopo Sansovino in the 1568 edition of the Vite, mentions a portrait the sculptor had made of the well-known jurist and legal scholar Girolamo Giganti, stating that it was to be found in S. Giovanni di Verdara, Padua.' The existence of this portrait has long been doubted,2 and it has often been suggested that Vasari had made a confusion with the bust of Lazzaro Bonamico that is documented from other sources as being in that location. However, the discovery in the Venetian archives of Giganti's will, in which he specifically requests burial in S. Giovanni di Verdara (see the Appendix below), suggests that Vasari's statement should be taken seriously, and prompts reconsideration of an existing bust which has at least some claim to be the one he was describing.