ART collecting starts with the Italian Renaissance; for the Renaissance developed a sense of history, enthusiasm for the products of Classical Antiquity and whole genres of contemporary art suited to, and indeed made for, the private house: paintings with mythological subjects paintings by Flemish artists, small bronzes and, in the North, graphic art.2 However, furnishing must be kept separate from collecting, and if that is done, paintings and small bronzes are the former rather than the latter. ollecting proper was at first concerned with Anti- quity. Ever since Ghiberti as an artist collected, ever since Poggio and Niccolo Niccoli as humanists col- ever since Alfonso of Aragon and Cosimo Medici as princes and political leaders collected, the collected apart from small things figures and fragments of marble to display them in courtyards, loggias and gardens. The Medici garden by the Piazza S. Marco in under the supervision of Bertoldo, and Michelangelo received his introduction to sculpture here. As for Rome, Marten van Heemskerck, who spent 8.2 the years IS32 36 there, drew many al fresco displays of Antique pieces 6 Already in I 471 Sixtus IV donated to the Roman people some important pieces for display on the Capitol among others the She-wolf, the Bo extracting a thorn, and a colossal head of the Emperor Constantine 7