Writing from Rome in 1842 – ‘the only city where an artist can live as an artist, free’ – the future Italian statesman and connoisseur of Renaissance painting Giovanni Morelli (1816– 91) expressed his newly formed views on the individuality of Raphael: ‘even though he is always the same, [he] is however at the same time always another, according to the argument that is treated.’ Any reader familiar with Morelli’s life and work will immediately suspect this as psychological projection from a man who was always doubling his self, who was ‘always another’. His creation of alter egos is a consistent element in his writing, stretching from a literary self-portrait as ‘Nicolaus Schäffer’ in his satires written as a student, to his art history published under the Russian pseudonym ‘Ivan Lermolieff’ (this is then doubly doubled, as we also recognise Morelli in Lermolieff’s fictional companion known only as ‘an Italian of the better class’). In fact, ‘Giovanni Morelli’ is not even his original name. Any life of Johannes Morell, born in Verona to parents of Swiss-Protestant heritage, will inevitably raise questions of identity and authenticity.