Yet, even as it was, Tassoni opened several paths for modern humorists.

Rabelais might have owned that caricature of Mars and Bacchus rioting in a tavern bed with Venus travestied as a boy, and in the morning, after breakfasting divinely on two hundred restorative eggs, escaping with the fear of a scandalized host and the police-court before their eyes.

Yet Rabelais would hardly have brought this cynical picture of crude debauchery into so fine a contrast with the celestial environment of gods and goddesses.

True to his principle of effect by alternation, Tassoni sometimes sketches the deities whom he derides, in the style of Volpato engravings after Guido.

They move across his canvas with ethereal grace.