RECOGNISING the fact that the study of Gaspard Dughet's ouevre is still largely incomplete and that a sound chronology has yet to be established, I should like to discuss the important fresco series from S. Martino ai Monti, which occupies a pivotal position in this regard. I do so in response to Marie-Nicole Boisclair's article, 'Gaspard Dughet. Une chronologie révisée' in which she suggests a dating for the series between the end of 1644 and the beginning of 1650. This is considerably earlier than the dating, between late 1647 and the spring of 1651, generally accepted since Ann B. Sutherland published the documents relating to this church of 1964 in her article 'The Decoration of San Martino ai Monti'.

Among the books that once formed part of Horace Walpole's library at Strawberry Hill, and which now belong to the Lewis Walpole Library formed by the late Wilmarth S. Lewis if Farmington, Connecticut, there is a small volume if six etchings bound together with a titles page inscribed in Walpole's hand 'Views in Italy drawn and etched by William Marlow, Scholar of Samuel Scott'. Although Marlow's work as an etched is recorded and there are other complete sets of the six Views in Italy in the British Museum, his prints seem never to have attracted serious attention. 

EVERY book on Josiah Wedgewood (the 250th anniversary of whose birth is celebrated this year) mentions the huge service made for Catherine the Great in 1773-4, but few describe it in detail - not surprisingly, since the bulk of it has never left Russia. Only a few trial pieces, and a handful of other examples which reached the West in the 1920s and 1930s are available for study. 

DURING the 1630s an agent of King Philip IV of Spain in Rome ordered, it seems, a large number of landscapes from painters working in the city. It is generally agreed that Claude Lorrain and Nicholas Poussin were among those who supplied paintings as a result of what has been called 'the most important foreign commission placed in Italy in the seventeenth century', but the most recent literature on these two artists provides neither a precise date for its placing nor a secure identification of the king's agent.

A painting, known as Scene in Helmingham Park, Suffolk, or, more properly, Edge of a Wood, was acquired as a Constable by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto in 1936. Since then it has only received passing notice in a few publications among the vast wealth of literature on Constable. It was first published by Andrew Shirley when it was still at Leggatt Brothers, and following this it made its appearance sporadically but no one has analysed the painting in detail. As a result of this neglect it has fallen into relative obscurity and was omitted from at least one important exhibition of Constable's oeuvre in the last few years. A full discussion of its history, introducing new documentary evidence, will not only give it the attention it deserves, but will add to the corpus of fully authenticated works by John Constable. 

ALTHOUGH the graphic oeuvre of Jacques-Louis David has received considerable attention in recent years, there is still much work to be done on the vast number of isolated sheets, sketchbooks and albums fatices. Among the problems of attribution not yet resolved, one of the most irritating concerns nine drawings (five of which are covered on the recto and the verso) related to the Oath of the Tennis Court, a project on which David worked from 1790 to 1792. The scepticism regarding an attribution to David seems justified when they ate compared to the important preparatory drawings for the composition, irrefutably autograph, one at Versailles, the other at the Fogg Art Museum. 

MATTHEW Boulton's enthusiasm for the antique taste derived from a wish to exploit what seemed to be a good commercial opportunity. The antique taste was all the rage. The French bronziers had captured the market for vases, candelabra and clock-cases, and their work was greatly admired among the English and continental aristocracies. It was Boulton's observation of French work that gave him the idea of making vases serve as candelbra, perfume-burners and clock-cases in the first place. I suspect that his liking for classical allegory owed its origin to the same source.