During the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the subject of Domenico Fetti's Portrait of an Actor, Hermitage, Leningrad (Fig.2), has been identified with a number of persons of quite different gifts and vocations. Of the portraits painted by Fetti during his residence at the Gonzaga court of Mantua (1614-22), few are precisely identified, yet none has compelled such interest in the identity of the sitter as this one.

The discovery of the unpublished will of Gabriele Fonseca by Irving Lavin in the Archivio Capitolino has been the most vital basis of re-examination of the Fonesca Chapel by Bernini. It will be demonstrated in the course of this article that new research has elucidated much about the commission and the iconography. It will also become clear that the patron had a definite programme in mind when he assigned the project to Bernini.

In June 1862, after seeing the mosaics of Venice and Torcello for the first time, Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98) wrote to his friend and patron John Ruskin (1819-1900). In his letter he discussed a plan, apparently conceived by the two men earlier that spring, for building a chapel and decorating it with mosaics:

The limited number of works and lack of interest on the part of criticism have not helped to contribute to a just estimate of Camillo Boccaccino, the founder of Cremonese Mannerism; only recently has Mina Gregori drawn the attention of students to the rôle he played in Italian Mannerist circles. Even more recently an attempt has been made by a study of the drawings to examine in detail the genesis of Boccaccino's fundamentally Venetian formation.

The dominant exhibit in Bristol's St Nicholas Church Museum, opened by the Bishop of Bristol in 1974, is William Hogarth's massive triptych depicting Christ's Resurrection and Ascension. Commissioned by the Vestry of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, in 1775, Hogarth completed the paintings fourteen months later and on 14th August 1756 signed a receipt for payment of £525. The subsequent history and the content and style of the altar-piece are are discussed by Ronald Paulson in Hogarth; His Life, Art and Times, and in the pamphlet published by Bristol City Art Gallery in 1963.

Although most students now accept that Cuyp was no longer active as a painter after about 1660, this view has been challenged by Dr Horst Gerson. On the basis of topographical evidence, Gerson claims that certain pictures - in his view undoubtedly the work of Cuyp - could not have been painted before 1665 at the very earliest. Since he is able to trace a considerable stylistic development within this group of pictures, it follows from his arguments that Cuyp may have continued painting until well into the 1670's. Such a challenge clearly cannot be allowed to go unanswered.

Adequate appraisal of the work of Theodore Von Holst (1810-44) has been greatly hampered by the obscurity that overtook most of the artist's painted output after his early death. It is only recently, in the wake of his master Fuseli, that several fine examples have come to light to provide a firmer basis for further assessment. Most significant of these is a striking painting of 1840, known as The Fortune Teller (Fig.42), used by Dante Gabriel Rosetti as the source for his first widely published poem, The Card Dealer : or, Vingt-Et-Un. From A Picture.

In December 1968 I had a letter from France from an elderly lady living at St-Jean-de-Luz. She told me that she had two portraits of Rose la Touche which she wished to sell. The lady was Mrs Feodora Ward-la Touche, and Rose la Touche had been her aunt by marriage. Naturally portraits of Rose la Touche are of extreme interest to a Ruskinian because of the long friendship between her and Ruskin and because of the dramatic influence which she had on his life.

Dame Joan Evans, who died in July last year at the age of eighty-four, was the daughter of one great scholar, Sir John Evans, and half-sister of another, Sir Arthur Evans. Her father was seventy when she was born but he lived long enough to influence his daughter's interests and tastes. Although she did not follow in his footsteps, she retained an interest in and frequently spoke with authority on prehistoric subjects and numismatics.

To friends, Bernard Berenson frankly admitted his foibles: he liked to linger over reproductions and to skip the texts of art-historical publications; he eagerly bought the latter and generally avoided their authors; he preferred museum officials to Academics; he was fond of pretty women, whatever their I.Q., and felt an irrational aversion for female graduates, doubly so if they had graduated in art history. The word 'dottoressa' amounted on his lips to an insult. The exception to this ingrained attitude was his esteem for Mary Pittaluga, whose death on 15th July 1977 deprived Florence of a remarkable personality.