* Early versions of this article were presented at the University of Chicago and the Newberry Library in 2018. Special thanks are due to the Biblioteca Berenson in Florence, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel and the Joseph Regenstein and Newberry Libraries in Chicago. The following friends and scholars have been of invaluable assistance: Christiane Andersson, Tapan Battacharya, Simona Cohen, Paul Gehl, Alexandra Korey, Lia Markey, Lucia Monaci Moran, Linda Pellecchia, Maxime Préaud and Paul Taylor (all remaining errors are, of course, my own). I would like to dedicate this essay to Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, whose work on visual sources has long been an inspiration. 1. Titian’s Three Ages of Man with animal heads, also known as an Allegory of Prudence, is discussed on p. 152-153 below. 2. Only a few impressions of these broadsheets have survived. The pair reproduced here are from the Collection Marolles, Réserve du Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale de France [here- after BnF] (Td 24 rés). The prints each measure c. 386/400 x 516/520 mm: the Ages of Man is signed ‘per me cristopheno bertello’, and the Ages of Woman simply ‘Cristopheno bertello’. Although extant impressions of these broadsheets are rare, others may turn up in the future. The count so far includes an Ages of Man in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (box 21, item n° 375); another is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (Object number RP-P-2017-889-1); and yet another in the Bertarelli Collection in Milan (inv. no.: PP. m. 10E-1, with the addition of an inscrip- tion under the signature ‘In Venetia ... Fasci’). Impres- sions of the Ages of Woman can be found in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (RP-P-2017-6097), the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Ufzi in Florence (2818st.sc.) and the Graphic Venetianist website reproduces an image of an impression sold by Christie’s in London (10 December 2019, lot 46): https://thegraphicvenetianist.com. I thank an anonymous Journal reader for pointing out two of these existing impressions. 119 JOURNAL OF THE WARBURG AND COURTAULD INSTITUTES, LXXXIV, 2021 A TRANSALPINE MOTIF IN COUNTER-REFORMATION ITALY: ANIMAL ANALOGIES WITH THE AGES OF MAN AND CRISTOFANO BERTELLI’S STEPS OF LIFE * Sara F. Matthews-Grieco Every creature in the world is like a book and a picture to us, and a mirror; a faithful representation of our life, our death, our condition, our end. Alan of Lille, On the Incarnation of Christ B y the second half of the sixteenth century, broadsheets and print series repre- senting the Ages of Man and Ages of Woman—with animal analogies for each stage of life—had become commonplace in the print markets of Germany, France and the Low Countries. Yet, despite the widespread success of this subject north of the Alps, and notwithstanding Titian’s enigmatic triple portrait executed in mid-century Venice, 1 this theme only appeared in the Italian print market in the early 1560s, in an enterprising but not particularly successful set of broadsheets printed in Modena and signed by Cristofano Bertelli. 2 The Bertelli broadsheets portray the Ages of Man and Ages of Woman as male and female versions of the Steps of Life motif, where the diferent stages of human life are arranged on the ascending and descending steps of a stepped arch, and each stage is associated with a diferent animal (Figs 1 and 2). As these broad- vol. 83 article shell_matthews_grieco_JWCI 10/10/2021 09:48 Page 1