This paper analyses a ball-game called the palla da scanno, which was played in Early Modern Italy. Until now, the only information about this game was provided by Antonio Scaino’s Trattato del giuoco della palla (1555). In order to achieve a better understanding of the nature and sociocultural implications of this game, this study also makes use of other visual and textual sources. The analysis of a portrait of a “sportsman”— Francesco Beccaruzzi’s Portrait of a ballplayer and his page (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin)—shows how this ball-game contributes to the normalization of behaviors and appearances of Italian Renaissance aristocracy. While these issues clearly find an echo in the Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, they may also be articulated with other information provided by Bartolomeo Zuccato’s contemporary chronicle of Treviso and by some unexpected sources such as Teofilo Folengo’s Baldus and sixteenth century Tuscan burlesque poetry. The confrontation of textual and visual sources gives us an opportunity to redraw the outlines of this game and its impact on contemporary customs in order to include them in the cultural history of Early Modern times.