THE only chapel built in the first seventy years of the sixteenth century in S.Maria in Aracoeli in Rome is the first one on the north aisle, belonging to the Serlupi family. This chapel was dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, although it was some-times referred to as the Chapel of the Assumption of the Virgin.

THE introduction of an unknown drawing for Raphael's Saint George, now in Washington, may begin as a commentary on an item in the sale catalogue of Robert Udny's drawings, May 1803: 347 One ST. GEORGE, A CAPITAL PEN DESIGN, made it is said for K. Henry VIII N.B. Fifty guineas have been refused for this drawing.

OLD legends die hard. In the nineteenth century J. D. Passavant wrote that Raphael's St George and the Dragon, then in the Hermitage and today in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Fig.23), had been commissioned by Guido-baldo da Montefeltre, the Duke of Urbino, as a gift to Henry VII of England. This contention was encouraged by the HONI inscribed on the garter worn by St George (Fig.24), allegedly commemorating the Duke's appointment to the Order of the Garter in 1504. The suggestion that it had been brought by Baldassare Castiglione, the Duke's proxy at the installation in 1506, made the tale even more attractive. It is unfortunate, however, that not one contemporary source supports any of this. The first known owner of this painting was the Earl of Pembroke, in whose collection the painting was when engraved and dated by Lucas Vorsterman in 1627.

CONFLICTING traditions have long obscured the identity of the patron for whom Raphael painted his Vatican Coronation of the Virgin. However, documents recently brought to light by several scholars in Perugia provide the means to resolve some old contradictions concerning this altar-piece from the church of San Francesco al Prato in Perugia. In addition, information on the painting's first owners suggests an unexpected connection between the Coronation and a very different early work by Raphael, the Borghese Entombment.

RAPHAEL'S portrait of Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi Rossi has usually been dated between 1517 and 1519 (the respective years of Rossi's elevation to the cardinalate and his death). In 1975, however, quoting a letter published first in 1882 but not known to art historians, James Beck refined the date of the painting by showing that it was finished by 8th September 1518, suggesting further that it was painted during the first half of that year. A new letter about the portrait, discovered in the Archivio di Stato of Florence, provides more information about the work and its genesis.

THE double portrait of Mrs Strangways Horner and her daughter at Melbury by Solimena was the most impressive of the painter's English commissions and it is not surprising to find that it caused some little stir among the English at Naples.