chemical medicine, although this kind of natural philosophy was increasingly frowned on and may well have played a part in the damnation memoriae that Del Monte was subjected to. But Federico Cesi and his Accademia dei Lincei were also dedicated followers of what they perceived as Paracelsian disciplines. It appears likely that the Lute Player was originally intended as a decoration for the studiolo on the first floor of the Casino on the Pincio that Del Monte had acquired in 1596, and where Guercino would later paint his fresco of Aurora for the Ludovisi. On the ground floor Del Monte did his alchemical work and chemistry; above, on the ceiling of the studiolo, Caravaggio painted the gods Neptune, Jupiter and Pluto, representing the Elements. Apollo would have struck the right chord in representing the harmony of the universe, in a place opposite the single window. Already the strength of his painting style was in painting classical subjects from life around him, like the Bacchus in the painting in the Uffizi, their features were sometimes disguised by their contemporary appearance. Since Giordano Bruno had written that it was appropriate to represent Apollo, ever-youthful, playing the lute, as opposed to his more conventional lyre, this may have been Del Monte's intention in this painting, and the rays of sunlight that are such a feature of the glass sphere have this meaning. Apollo is very much in place in a room devoted to the elements, as is implied in the ceiling painting, for the Stanza degli Elementi that Vasari did in Palazzo Vecchio has Apollo with the Chariot of the Sun in its middle, and Del Monte had this subject as the centrepiece of the ceiling in his new studiolo in Palazzo Avogadro, painted by Andrea Sacchi. Indeed, one of the most copied images in Giulio Romano's decoration of the Palazzo del Te is the ceiling with that perhaps Caravaggio may have known from a drawing. The studiolo had room also for another of Del Monte's pictures, the Shepherd Corydon. This work, now in the Capitoline Museum, has long been misconstrued as St. John the Baptist, but apart from the exhibitionist subject of the young boy, the ram (instead of a lamb) is a contradiction for that subject. Instead the work is an emblematic subject: the ram represents the first sign of the Zodiac, Aries, at the period of the spring equinox and