311 311 One of the drawings that entered the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, in 1931 with the bequest of Pedro Fernández Durán (1846– 1930) was traditionally entitled A Young Man Accompanied by Three Virtues (Fig. 1). 1 Ascribed to Greek-born painter Antonio Vassilacchi, called Aliense (1556–1629), based on an inscription on the mount (d[ic]ho Aliense), the drawing features a group of four figures—three female and one male—standing in front of a grandiose arched opening flanked by two smaller ones. An impre- sa of a figure in a boat approaching a column crowned by a star is enclosed in an escutcheon below the central arch. A scroll, entwined around the escutcheon, is inscribed, IOA. / BAPT. / ALBANI / ASSIS. Although the attribution to Aliense has never been questioned, the Prado sheet was not included in the extensive checklist of the painter’s drawings compiled by Bert Meijer, nor has it been studied in detail. 2 In the 2004 exhibition and collection cata- logue of the museum’s sixteenth-century Italian drawings, Nicholas Turner argued that the name of the youth portrayed at center is recorded in the inscription in the escutcheon. 3 Turner’s observa- tion is correct, but his reading omitted the last syllable (ASSIS), thereby concealing the figure’s real identity. By offering a correct reading of the name, as well as by examining internal iconographic evidence, this study will argue that the sheet is a unique representation of the Vicentine architect and sculptor Giambattista [Giovanni Battista] Albanese (1576–1630). This identification opens up a window into the comparatively little-known professional and social life of Greek-born Aliense in the Domini di Terraferma (the hinterland territories of the Republic of Venice beyond the Adriatic coast in northeast Italy). Moreover, unpublished archival sources, presented here for the first time, reveal Aliense’s investment interests in Albanese’s native Vicenza. The name in the inscription is not the only piece of evidence that allows Giambattista Albanese to be identified. The three female fig- ures that accompany Albanese in the drawing— described in Turner’s entry as the three virtues 4 — should instead be identified as personifications of the Arts. Each of them carries attributes that reveal her identity. To Albanese’s right stands Rhetoric presenting a piece of paper to the young man and holding a caduceus (an attribute of Mercury, the god of eloquence). The personification of Sculpture, who abandoned a statue and a ham- mer at her feet, rests her right hand on Albanese’s shoulder. With her left hand, Sculpture embraces Architecture, who carries a compass and dividers in her right hand. Sculpture and architecture are the arts in which Giambattista would excel in his life. Rhetoric, on the other hand, represents the intellectual domain underpinning the practice of all the visual arts. By including the personification of Rhetoric, the Greek-born Aliense elevated the status of the ambitious young man from a mere craftsman into an intellectual artist. A Drawing of Giambattista Albanese by Antonio Vassilacchi, Called Aliense GEORGIOS E. MARKOU