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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Five composite capitals and two entablatures ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Four elaborate capitals, including one with three putti Detail from rinceau ornament ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Three elaborate capitals Section of tongue-and-dart moulding ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Three elaborate capitals Two candelabra ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Two elaborate capitals and an architrave Standing figure of an innkeeper ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
"And it is no marvel that the work of Amico revealed skill of hand rather than any other quality, for it is said that, like the eccentric and extraordinary person that he was, he went through all Italy drawing and copying every work of painting or relief, whether good or bad, on which account he became something of an adept in invention; and when he found anything likely to be useful to him, he laid his hands upon it eagerly, and then destroyed it, so that no one else might make use of it. The result of all this was that he acquired the strange, mad manner that we know."
– the Life of Amico Aspertini by Giorgio Vasari (1568), translated by Gaston du C. de Vere (1912)
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Nine studies of wall niches and antique altars ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
"A sheet of sketches after five antique funerary altars (too generalized and transformed for identification), two designs for niches, and two volute keystones decorated with figures in armour."
– curator's notes from the British Museum
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Studies of architectural cornices ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Studies of architectural cornices Heads, a Term and a Figure ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Studies of architectural details Heads of Roman soldier and of Satyr ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Studies of architectural details Female and male heads ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
"Finally, having reached the age of seventy, what with his art and the eccentricity of his life, he became raving mad, at which Messer Francesco Guicciardini, a noble Florentine, and a most trustworthy writer of the history of his own times, who was then Governor of Bologna, found no small amusement, as did the whole city. Some people, however, believe that there was some method mixed with this madness of his, because, having sold some property for a small price while he was mad and in very great straits, he asked for it back again when he regained his sanity, and recovered it under certain conditions, since he had sold it, so he said, when he was mad. I do not swear, indeed, that this is true, for it may have been otherwise; but I do say that I have often heard the story told."
– the Life of Amico Aspertini by Giorgio Vasari (1568), translated by Gaston du C. de Vere (1912)
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Profile of a Base and Architectural ground-plan ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Architectural details Male nude half-length, probably Hercules ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Landscape with figures and antique ruins Two cornices in foreground ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
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| Amico Aspertini Sketchbook Profiles of entablatures and a Column-base Men gathered around a horse ca. 1530-40 drawing on paper British Museum |
"He used to paint with both hands at the same time, holding in one the brush with the bright colour, and in the other that with the dark. But the best joke of all was that he had his leather belt hung all round with little pots full of tempered colours, so that he looked like the Devil of S. Macario with all those flasks of his; and when he worked with his spectacles on his nose, he would have made the very stones laugh, and particularly when he began to chatter, for then he babbled enough for twenty, saying the strangest things in the world, and his whole demeanour was a comedy. Certain it is that he never used to speak well of any person, however able or good, and however well dowered he saw him to be by Nature or Fortune. And, as has been said, he so loved to chatter and tell stories, that one evening, at the hour of the Ave Maria, when a painter of Bologna, after buying cabbages in the Piazza, came upon Amico, the latter kept him under the Loggia del Podestà with his talk and his amusing stories, without the poor man being able to break away from him, almost till daylight, when Amico said: 'Now go boil your cabbages, for the time is getting on.'"
– the Life of Amico Aspertini by Giorgio Vasari (1568), translated by Gaston du C. de Vere (1912)