There are alternative, unrealised, modelli for many famous buildings, including St Peter's, Rome and the "Great Model" of St Paul's Cathedral, London, showing a different design by Sir Christopher Wren from that actually built.
Obice de 75/18 modello 35 on display at the ''Musée des Blindés | modello | Fiat-Revelli Modello 1914 |
His publications include The Alphabet and the Algorithm (MIT Press, 2011), Architecture in the Age of Printing (MIT Press, 2001; also translated into other languages), a commentary on Leon Battista Alberti's Descriptio Urbis Romae (2000, in French; and 2007, in English, co-authored); La maschera e il modello (1993); Metodo e ordini nella teoria architettonica dei primi moderni (1993).
The trip was to make a clay bust of Philip IV of Spain as the modello for the Florentine sculptor Pietro Tacca's bronze equestrian statue of Philip (the statue now on plaza de Oriente in Madrid), which is what he is shown doing in the portrait, shaping the clay with a stick (though the bust itself is only in outline, since the painting is unfinished).