This essay examines the relationship between sixteenth-century critical texts that define the stylistic accomplishments of
Renaissance painters and the evidence of the paintings themselves. Central to this relationship was the synthesis of past
and present in the formation of a new style, where ancient visual models and theoretical principles were creatively blended
with modern cultural ideals within an atmosphere of political and religious change. Two historical frescoes by the Florentine
painter, Franceso Salviati (1510–1563) are discussed in detail along with selected passages from the texts of Giorgio Vasari,
Franceso Bocchi, Antonfrancesco Doni, Ludovico Domenichi, and Giovan Battista Armenini, among others.
This article is a revised and expanded version of a paper I presented at the Third Meeting of the International Society for
the Classical Tradition in Boston, 1995. It represents some ideas from part of a larger work in progress that addresses the
relationship between style, rhetoric, and narrative structure in courtly fresco painting during the mid-sixteenth century
in Florence and Rome.