A Madonna from Pozzolatico by Jacopo del Casentino

This early fourteenth-century panel from a small church near Impruneta (Fig.2) is an extremely rare example of a trecento painting in perfect condition; it shows us how paintings of the period would look had they come down to us free of the devastations of time and ignorance. Not only is the Pozzolatico panel a curiosity by virtue of its condition, it is also a document of great importance for the history of technique. If other pictures of the time seem hard and distorted by comparison, it is largely because poor conservation has altered the original formal concept, by destroying the final layer with which panels of this type were finished.

SINCE its importance was first recognised at the beginning of this century, Vincenzo Borghini's role in the preparation of the second edition of Vasari's Lives has been defined as that of an editor and literary advisor. His few documented substantive contributions all seemed to have been taken from literary sources, and the general guidelines he recommended in a series of letters to Vasari in 1564, intended to bring the Lives up to more sophisticated historiographical standards, seemed ultimately motivated by a concern with history as a literary genre. Characterised in this way, Borghini's involvement in the project conformed to what was known of his philological and historical interests and appropriately complemented his more familiar role as provider of literary programmes for many of Vasari's pictures.

'... A SOCIETY for the promotion of Exhibitions of Inter-national Art has been formed, the aim of the organisers being to hold exhibitions of the finest art of the day... in May, June and July at Prince's Skating Rink, Knights-bridge, a building which when suitably altered and arranged will be unusually well adapted for that purpose. The Gallery will be known as the International Gallery and a feature of the exhibitions will be the non-recognition of nationality in art...'.

THE hitherto unknown activity in Arezzo of Domenico Veneziano is documented here in a series of payments made to him in 1450 by a lay flagellant confraternity, the Compagnia di Sant'Antonio Abate, for the painting of a gonfalone (processional banner). The new documents, divided between two account- books in the Archivio di Stato, Arezzo, state that the painter - referred to as 'Maestro Domenicho da Vinesgia dipintore' or 'Dome-nicho di Bartolomeo' -was paid over sixty-four lire between 9th February and 21st July 1450; the record appears to be complete. Sadly, as with all other documented works by Domenico, there seems to be no trace of the object; but although only a fraction of what he produced has survived, these documents are valuable both for our knowledge of Domenico and for the history of art in Arezzo and Tuscany as a whole.

IN the Hamburg Kunsthalle is a marble bust of a cardinal (Figs.36-38, 43) bequeathed to the museum in 1910 by Freiherr Johann Heinrich von Schròder, along with his collection of nineteenth-century paintings. The records of the gift are silent concerning the sculpture: no attribution or date, no mention of the time or place of acquisition. Described in the museum's 1918 inventory as by an 'Italian Master of the seventeenth Century,' it was re-assigned in 1939 to an 'Unknown Master of the nineteenth Century'. The work remained in the museum storeroom until the spring of 1984, when preparations were being made for a special exhibition of the Von Schroder collection. The curator, Dr Georg Syamken, then wrote to Jennifer Montagu of the Warburg Institute and to myself, enclosing photographs of the bust and indicating that he had become doubtful of the nineteenth-century date.

AMONG the pictures in the Usher Art Gallery at Lincoln is a handsome if provincial arched altar-piece of the Madonna and Child enthrone with St Anthony Abbot and St Jerome, which is clearly Venetic in origin and has been tentatively ascribed to Giovanni da Mel (Fig.45). It can in fact be attributed with some confidence to Francesco Pagani da Milano, a painter of Lombard origin who worked at Treviso and in Friuli, where he came under the influence of Pordenone as well as more conservative mentors. The scheme of the Lincoln picture is most closely paralleled in the signed altar-piece of 1538 from Collalto in the gallery at Treviso (Fig.46): the types, the head of the Virgin and that of the Child, which distantly recalls the Milanese imitators of Leonardo, are very similar, and so too are the somewhat stolid heads of Anthony and Bartholomew, his counterpart at Treviso; and where there is one bird at Lincoln, there are two at Treviso. What is otherwise unparalleled in Francesco's work is the townscape behind, with its battlemented walls and bare campanile, painted in cream and creamy grey, a setting that must have had some special relevance to the commission. Although considerably abraded, the picture deserves to be more widely known, if only because it is one of the few full-scale works in this country in which the impact of Pordenone's pursuit of volumetric expression on his lesser con-temporaries can readily be comprehended.