A cartellino (Italian for "small piece of paper"[1]) is an illusionistic portrayal of a written note included in painting, mostly from the with a legend that records the name of the artist, the date, the subject, or some other relevant information about the work. About 500 Renaissance paintings include a cartellino, but the device has been adopted by some later artists.
It usually takes the form of a fictive rectangular scrap of parchment or paper – sometimes with frayed edges, creased or torn – which is depicted as being attached with a pin or wax to a surface that lies parallel to the picture plane, perhaps a foreground parapet or a background wall. Often the cartellino gives the impression of the note being attached to the surface of the painting rather than being part of the artwork itself. This trompe-l'œil effect may reflect an earlier artistic practice of real notes being physically attached to paintings. Other suggestions of the origins include the inscriptions included in the Early Netherlandish paintings works of Jan van Eyck, such as his 1432 Léal Souvenir, and from the artistic practice at the studio of Francesco Squarcione in Padua, based on the gothic inscriptions seen in medieval paintings.
In her 2009 PhD thesis, Kandice Rawlings distinguishes the cartellino from other written element including in a painting, such as depictions of inscriptions in stone or on wooden plaques, or writing in books held by subjects, or on streamers or banderoles. Other contemporary terms that were used for the same device include letterina, cartucce, and bolletta – that is, small letter, cartouche, or label. Despite the similarity of the word, there is little evidence of any connection with the cardellino (goldfinch, a symbol of Christ's Passion).
Rawlings documents 412 Italian paintings with cartellini, almost all religious subject or portraits. Early examples are connected with Padua, but about three quarters were painted by artists trained or active in Venice and the Veneto. About three quarters were painted between 1470 and 1530, with the largest number in the first decade of the 16th century. About four fifths contain the artist's signature; a third include a date, often alongside a signature. In addition, Rawlinges identifies another 74 paintings from outside Italy that include cartellini, principally from Germany (mainly Albrecht Dürer in the early 16th century), England (mainly Holbein in the mid-1500s), and Spain (mainly El Greco in the late 16th and early 17th century, Velázquez in the 1630s, and Zurbarán as late as the 1660).
The cartellino had a knowing revival in Diego Rivera's 1915 Zapatista Landscape.
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