Agostino Carracci's print Il reciproco Amore has been shown, in an article published recently in this magazine, to have provided the decisive inspiration for Matisse's Bonheur de vivre.  The similarities between the compositions are striking; and the fact that there is very little in Matisse's  preliminary work which seems to prepare his final composition underlines the importance of Carracci's print: it must have come as a sudden revelation, offering a solution to Matisse's problems both in terms of pictorial structure and of content.

On 10th August 1665 Bernini was taken by Chantelou to see the collection of a silk-merchant called Serisier who lived opposite the church of Saint-Merri in the rue Saint-Martin.  He owned a number of paintings by Pousin, including two Phocion landscapes (Earls of Derby and Plymouth), the Esther and Ahasuerus (Hermitage), the Holy Family with ten figures (Dublin), and one described as La Vierge en Egypte.

The Library of the Athos Monastery of Zographou owns two single leaves with Canon Tables on their rectos and versos; they remain unnumbered, and are now kept under glass in wooden frames. They are roughly  of the same size, 22/33 by 18 cm; the slightly smaller of the two contains Canon I and the beginning of Canon 2, and the slightly larger one Canons 6 to 10. Stylistically, the two leaves are markedly different; they cannot originally have belonged to one and the same manuscript, and in all probability they were not even produced in the same century. There are no Gospel books in Zographou itself from which they could have been excised; but the probability is that they did not come from very far, and that they were originally part of manuscripts still preserved in other monastic libraries on Mont Athos.

The discovery of five stone heads in the wall of a house in Saint-Omer in January 1923 was recorded in the Bulletin historique of the Societé des Antiquaires de la Morinie. It was stated that the heads had been bought by an Audomarois dealer, taken out of the country and had travelled via Belgium and London to America, where they were eventually bought by the dealer Gimpel. However, by the time the heads were acquired by Gimpel they numbered four, and the whereabouts of the fifth was unknown. The four heads remained in the possession of the Gimpel family until 1978, when they were sold in America: two of the heads are now at the Cleveland Museum of Art, one is on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the fourth is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The four heads are clearly homogenous and can be associated with the Judgement group from Thérouanne Cathedral now displayed in the north transept of the Cathedral of Saint-Omer: all show the same degree of weathering on the front of the face and retain the details of modelling at the side of the head. From the condition and size of the heads there can be little doubt that they were originally attached to jamb figures, and Wixom has suggested that they may represent Peter, James the Greater, Paul, and Andrew.

In the early part  of this century, H. P Mitchell drew attention to the two enamel plaques in the British Museum. One plaque depicts Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (1129-71) kneeling, holding a crozier and a shrine and the other two bust- length angels swinging censers. Mitchell attempted to demonstrate that the plaques originated in the workshop of Godefroid de Clare. However, scholars have argued that the colours, style and scale differ from Mosan enamels. As a result, the enamels have been identified  as English instead of Mosan. Still, these English enamels do not display the mannerisms of contemporary Insular work and there is an undeniable relationship of a less specific sort to Mosan art.

The manuscript Christ's College 1 is a text book of Peter Lombard's On the Sentences which appears to have been owned by St Augustine's, Canterbury in the later fourteenth century. It contains no illustrations and its decoration is limited to some fine pen-flourished initials. However, its final two flyleaves have some drawings sketched on them in silver or lead point. They depict a number of figures and some, at first glance haphazardly placed, lines and compass marks. It can be demonstrated, however, that all these lines and marks were made deliberately and that the two end flyleaves of this manuscript represent an early fourteenth- century illuminator's plan. Because so little evidence survives about the working methods of medieval illuminators these drawings are of particular interest.

which appears to have been owned by St Augustine's, Canterbury in the later fourteenth century. It contains no illustrations and its decoration is limited to some fine pen-flourished initials. However, its final two flyleaves have some drawings sketched on them in silver or lead point. They depict a number of figures and some, at first glance haphazardly placed, lines and compass marks. It can be demonstrated, however, that all these lines and marks were made deliberately and that the two end flyleaves of this manuscript represent an early fourteenth- century illuminator's plan. Because so little evidence survives about the working methods of medieval illuminators these drawings are of particular interest.

Giuseppe Campori, in Gli Artisti Italiani e Stranieri negli Stati Estensi, commenting on the Florentine painter, Domenico Passignano, also made a brief but quite interesting reference to the Emilian painter Bartolomeo Schedoni. Campori noted that Passignano had provided an altarpiece for the family chapel of the Magnanini in the 'Chiesa Arcipretale' of Fanano, to take the place of one painted expressively for this chapel by Bartolomeo Schedoni but confiscated by the Duke of Parma ('che... volle ritenere per se' ). Campori gave as the source of this information Memorie Storiche di Fanano, published in Milan in 1811; a work which to his knowledge existed in but a single copy - that in the possession of Count Mario Valdrighi of Modena.

AMONG the collection of paintings formed by Sir Peter Lely was an outstanding group of works by Sir Anthony Van Dyck. Lely's sale catalogue (1682) lists the pictures with sizes, and the accounts kept by his executors record the names of the buyers at the sale and the prices which they paid. With this information it is possible to identify most of the group, but a number of pictures, for which the sale catalogue is the only witness, remain to be identified. I want to discuss two such.