IN 1971, there emerged in print a reference to a work commissioned from the youthful Michelangelo hitherto completely unknown. The reference appeared in a book chiefly devoted to an entirely different topic, Michelangelo's work for the Piccolomini family for their altar in the cathedral of Siena. It was the purpose of Mancusi-Ungaro, the author, to re-examine all the available material relating to the Sienese project in the course of doing this, he resurrected a thesis advanced years earlier by W.R. Valentiner, that the marble group of Madonna and Child now in Notre Dame at Bruges was originally destined for the Piccolomini project, but was later disposed of by Michelangelo elsewhere in a manner which did little credit to him. 

IT is now over five years since Paolo dal Poggetto began to uncover a spectacular series of figural drawings in the crypt of Michelangelo's New Sacristy, and nearly as long since the equally exciting architectural drawings were revealed in the altar chapel. But the wheels of art history grind slowly, and little scholarly response has appeared since initial reactions were reported in the press. 

IT is easy to read Michiel's Notizia in a neatly printed edition. It is difficult to wrestle with his original manuscript in the Marciana. Michiel's notes are now bound together with other renaissance manuscripts, some of which are copies in his own hand. The Notizia was not originally a notebook, but a collection of notes written on paper with varying watermarks, in different inks and at different times. 

THE drawing by Michelangelo of Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well published here is one of the most beautiful additions to the corpus of drawings in recent years. The very scale of the sheet is remarkable; it is larger than any comparable drawing in the collection of the British Museum. 

IN an article which appeared in THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE in 1961, Creighton Gilbert published a drawing then recently acquired by the Ringling Museum of Art, and argued that it was a study by Jacapo Tinoretto from Michelangelo's modello for the head of the Medici Chapel St Damian. Moreover, Gilbert established that the model for the St Damian was in Venice by 1536, in the collection of Pietro Aretino. 

THE Torre dei Venti, Gregory XIII's astronomical and meteorological observatory at the Vatican was constructed between 1578 and 1580 at what was then the north end of the secondo braccio, that wing of the Vatican palace which bounds the Cortile del Belvedere on the west. The frescoed decorations of the rooms in the tower, executed from 1580 to 1582, have recently been restored and the completion if this work has been marked by the appearance of an attractive and informative publication.