DURING the highly publicised sale of Ruben's personal collection of works of art after his death in 1640, there figured conspicuously agents bidding with success on behalf of the King of Spain. Among the many prizes acquired for Madrid was the sumptuous Garden of Love, today one of Ruben's most beloved works, and by any measure, one of his richest artistically. 

AN equestrian portrait like that of Olivares in the Prado or the closely related picture in the Metropolitan Museum is usually interpreted either in a very general or a very specific way. On the one hand, this kind of state portrait has been taken for granted as a very common form of baroque court art that may be traced back through the equestrian monument to the early renaissance and antiquity.

THE two little Views of Villa Medici Gardens in Rome are unique in Velazquez's oueuvre. Not only are they on an exceptionally small scale, comparable only to the background scenes in some larger compositions, they are also the only surviving landscapes that are indisputably autograph. Consequently, since they are not documented, they present an extreme example of dating Velazquez's work on style alone. 

THE recent cleaning of Goya's Portrait of Dona Isabel de Porcel has not only revealed one of the most inspired of Goya's portraits in all its brilliancy of colouring and technique, but also, through x-ray and infrared photographs taken in the process of treatment, the presence - totally unexpected beneath so assured a design - of an earlier portrait on the canvas, which appears with unusual clarity and precision. 

ON 20th June 1825 and the following days, Sotheby's sold 'an invaluable collection of unpublished historical documents' grouped into 665 lots. Though in the sale catalogue, these documents are only said to have been in the possession of 'A gentleman in Holland', they were in fact the property of Mr. C. A van Sypestyn from Haarlem. The auction, originally scheduled for 20th May 1825 was postponed till 20th June. A survey of the rare catalogue will easily demonstrate that, as far as the political and cultural history of the Netherlands was concerned, the collection of documents proved most notable. 

THERE is only one Spanish painting in the collection of the late Count Antoine Seilern, a double-sided panel painting described in his catalogue as a wing of an altar of the Spanish School, early sixteenth century, with on the foot, a Lamentation of Thuringia. Its quality is good and the condition if remarkable for a panel of that age.