In Alessandro Allori’s 1602 Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon), Joseph holds a male Northern cardinal, an American songbird with red plumage and a triangular crest. Allori’s painting can be linked to an actual cardinal whose presence at the botanic garden of the University of Pisa is documented by three letters and a watercolor sent from Pisa to Bologna naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi in 1599. The watercolor, by the German artist Daniel Froeschl, was reproduced in a woodcut in the second volume of Aldrovandi’s Ornithologiae, published in 1600. Froeschl’s image also inspired cardinals in pietra dura. The cardinal in Allori’s painting, however, is not derived from Froeschl. Allori either saw the bird himself or another portrayal of it that has been lost. Allori’s painting was once in Lisbon’s Augustinian friary of Graça. It is unclear how or when it got there, but the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was a Spanish client state and Allori’s paintings were among the many artistic tributes sent from Florence to Madrid. The painting may have arrived in Lisbon via Madrid.