Nozze di Giacobbe di Rachele (detail)

Carlo Lasinio's Pitture a fresco del Campo Santo di Pisa displays a series of engravings from fifteenth–century paintings attributed to Giotto, Memmi, Gozzoli, and other early Italian masters.

Lasinio's work was quite successful. It originated in an 1806 prospectus for publication, an 1812 first printing, another printing in 1822, and a second edition in 1832-3 with re-engraved plates.

DGR at some point acquired a copy of the 1828 edition of Lasinio's work. In his Memoir of his brother's life, WMR quotes Holman Hunt as follows: “The companionship of Rossetti and myself [in 1848] soon brought about a meeting with Millais, at whose house one night we found a book of engravings of the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa.”. This book proved the catalyst for the founding of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. As WMR went on to point out, the engravings were important to the three young men for giving “some idea of the motives, feeling, and treatment, of the paintings of Gozzoli, and of those ascribed to Orcagna and other mediæval masters. It seems that Rossetti was not quite prepared beforehand to believe in these very olden painters, and Brown specially cautioned him not to undervalue them. I well recollect the enthusiasm with which, subsequently to seeing the engravings, Dante spoke to me on the subject.”

• Lasinio, Pitture a fresco del Campo Santo , 5-6.
• Marillier, DGR: An Illustrated Memorial , 16.
• Phythian, Pre–Raphaelite Brotherhood , xiv.
• WMR, Family Letters , vol. 1, 125.