Inscribed throughout by the artist, mostly with the names of allegorical personages, porta vertutis; gloria; disegnio / colorito / inventione; decoro; prudenza; temperanza; giustitia; fortezza; faticha; diligenza; studio, intiligenza; gratie; spirirto; Adulatione; persuatione; ministro della Invidia; parto di maladicenza; destratio; prospetiva; pitura; Ignorantia crasa; Refugio dei magligni; serva da dapochi.
Watermark: Eagle in a circle surmounted by a crown (Briquet 209; Verona, 1582-96).
Colville, Norman, Captain, former owner.
Scholz, János, former owner.
Rhoda Eitel-Porter and and John Marciari, Italian Renaissance Drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 2019, no. 122.
Selected references: Indianapolis 1954, no. 39; Heikamp 1957, 189-94; Heikamp 1958, 46; London 1960, under no. 80; Cologne 1963-64, no. 178; New Haven 1964, no. 54; New York 1965-66, no. 141; London and elsewhere 1968, no. 115; Middletown 1969, no. 14; Washington and New York 1973-74, no. 10; Byam Shaw 1976, under no. 544; Cavazzini 1989, 169-77; Milwaukee and New York 1989-90, no. 85; Acidini Luchinat 1998-99, 2:129, 149n53; Ottawa 2009, no. 111.
Detlef Heikamp, "Ancora su Federico Zuccari," Rivista d'Arte, 33, 1958, p. 46, n. 7.
Jacob Bean and Felice Stampfle, Drawings from New York Collections, I, The Italian Renaissance, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1965-1966, no. 141, repr.
Konrad Oberhuber and Dean Walker, Sixteenth Century Italian Drawings From the Collection of János Scholz, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1973-1974, no. 10.
Patrizia Cavazzini, "The Porta Virtutis and Federico Zuccari's Expulsion from the Papal State. An Unjust Conviction," Römisches Jahrbuch der Biblioteca Hertziana, XXV, 1989, pp. 169-177, repr. fig. 3.
E. James Mundy, Renaissance into Baroque: Italian Master Drawings by the Zuccari 1550-1600, exh. cat., Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, and National Academy of Design, New York, 1989-90, pp. 252-255, no. 85, repr.
Cristina Acidini Luchinat, Pintoricchio, Florence, 1999, II, pp. 129, 149 note 53, repr. fig. 18.
David Franklin, ed., From Raphael to the Carracci: The Art of Papal Rome, exh. cat., National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2009, pp. 348-49, no. 111, repr.