(b Verona, 1552; d Verona, 1611–14). Italian sculptor and bronze-founder. He was the outstanding member of a dynasty of bronze-foundrymen specializing in ornamental artefacts such as church- and table-bells, mortars, inkstands, door-knockers, firedogs etc. His works have been identified from the signature that he customarily cast on to his products: IOSEPH DE LEVIS IN VERONA MI FECE. As well as his signature, he often added a date on his works (as was traditional with bells), which has enabled a substantial dated oeuvre of some 30 items to be built up. The idea that he might have been Jewish, on account of the suggestive form of his name as he gave it in signatures, Joseph Levi, now has to be discounted in view of Rognini’s discovery that the family came from the village of Levo (Benjamin, p. 415). The Latinized form of the name is pure snobbery, normal at the time in people who had pretensions to a position in society even when they were not of noble birth.