RECENTLY discovered documents in the Archivio di Stato, Florence, permit firm identification of the patron and intended location of one of Andrea del Sarto's earliest major panels, the so-called Tobias altar-piece now in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum. The painting (Fig.2) depicts the Archangel Raphael flanked by Tobias and Saint Leonard, who presents a kneeling young man with hands clasped in prayer; at the top of the panel is a small, foreshortened image of Christ carrying the Cross and blessing the group below. Two details of the composition are related to other work by Andrea. The complex pose of Raphael's right hand, holding an unguent container, resembles that of a background figure in a fresco of a miracle of S. Filippo Benizzi in SS. Annunziata, a work dated 1510 (Figs.4 and 5). Furthermore, a preparatory drawing of the donor (Fig.3) is in the Lugt Collection, Paris. Andrea's authorship of the altar-piece seems beyond dispute; both John Shearman and Sydney Freedberg recognise his hand and place the execution of the painting in 1511 on stylistic grounds.

IN 1980, Andrew Wilton noted that a copy of Cozens's 'lost' publication of 1759, An Essay to Facilitate the Inventing of Landskips (transcribed in Appendix A; Figs.6-17), was preserved in an album containing other works by Cozens in the Hermitage. The text of this Essay opens with a lengthy quotation from the 1721 English edition of Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on Painting, which indicates that not only had Cozens been aware of the hint to study old walls, streaked stones, etc. nearly thirty years before he mentioned it in the New Method, but that even at this early date he considered his blot method an improvement upon Leonardo's. In fact, as we shall see, the New Method and the Various Species of Composition in Nature were merely elaborations of the blot landscape system Cozens had first invented in the 1750s.

THE early Italian collection of the Staatliches Lindenau- Museum in Altenburg, East Germany, houses a small pair of panels, St Augustine (Fig.23), and St Vincent Ferrer  Fig.24), which carry an attribution to the Sienese painter Guidoccio Cozzarelli. However, before Berenson listed them with his oeuvre early in the century, they were assigned to Matteo di Giovanni or his school. Despite the general agreement with Berenson found in the literature since his re-attribution of the panels, evidence will be presented here to support their return to the oeurve of Matteo di Giovanni, and to suggest an original context for them.

THE altar-piece by Cosimo Rosselli (1439-1507) of Sts Barbara, John the Baptist and Matthias Apostle in the Accademia in Florence (Fig.33) is generally thought to have been painted shortly before the S. Filippo Benizzi fresco in the Chiostro dei Voti of SS. Annunziata, dated by Richa to 1476. It is known from early sources to have been painted for the Confraternity of St Barbara, known as the Compagnia de' Tedeschi, which met in SS. Annunziata. This is confirmed by its inscription, which reads: BARBARA DIVA TIBI TABVLAM SANCTISSIMA CETVS THEVTONICVS POSVIT. QVI TVA FESTA COLIT

THE Venus and Adonis (Fig.35), just bought by the Kimbell Art Museum, has been revealed through its recent cleaning to be a beautiful early work by Nicolas Poussin (see also p.411 of this issue). This conclusion has been reached independently by Denis Mahon, Erich Schleier, Konrad Oberhuber and myself (the first and third of these opinions have been communicated to me in writing, while the second has been reported to me). It is above all the quality of the work itself that attests to Poussin's authorship. The lush yet delicate colouring, the refinement of the drawing, and the robust plasticity of the figures are proof of his direct responsibility. In addition, a major pentimento, putto reading to the left of Adonis, proves almost beyond doubt that this work is the prime autograph version by Pousin of this composition (Fig.36). How these charming and active putti could have given rise to the identification of the 'Master of the Clumsy Children' is mysterious to me. Whatever virtue that classification may have in other cases, it is particularly distracting in this one. It should now be clear that the present work is an early painting by Poussin himself; the question, is how early?

IN their article on recent acquisitions at the Kimbell Art Mu-seum, Fort Worth, Edmund Pillsbury and William Jordan illustrate in colour a painting by Le Nain representing an Intérieur paysan avec un vieux joueur de flageolet (p.412, Fig.5), the original version of this well known composition. It was unknown until 1978, when it was discovered in an English private collection by the late David Carritt. He brought it to the attention of Jacques Thuillier, who was then organising the admirable Le Nain exhibition at the Grand Palais, and it was reproduced in extremis as No.27bis on the last page of the catalogue - page 374, after the bibliography! Unfortunately, however, in spite of the assurances given to its owner, it was not lent to the exhibition. Now returned to its original dimensions and scrupulously restored by John Brealey, it can take its place among the most beautiful Le Nains in American collections.

IN their article on recent acquisitions at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Edmund Pillsbury and William Jordan illustrate in colour a painting by Le Nain representing an Intérieur paysan avec un vieux joueur de flageolet (p.412, Fig.5), the original version of this well known composition. It was unknown until 1978, when it was discovered in an English private collection by the late David Carritt. He brought it to the attention of Jacques Thuillier, who was then organising the admirable Le Nain exhibition at the Grand Palais, and it was reproduced in extremis as No.27bis on the last page of the catalogue - page 374, after the bibliography! Unfortunately, however, in spite of the assurances given to its owner, it was not lent to the exhibition. Now returned to its original dimensions and scrupulously restored by John Brealey, it can take its place among the most beautiful Le Nains in American collections.

IN the years 1911 and 1912 Emil Nolde executed a large number of sketches in the Berlin Museum für Vòlkerkunde, as preparatory studies for his so-called ethnographic still lifes (Figs.46-48, 50). It is possible that they were also intended as illustrations for the book he began to write in 1912 on the Kunstausserungen der Naturvòlker, since Nolde refers to the sketches as, 'ein vertiefteres Eindringenin das Wesentliche als mechanische Aufnahmenu nd Ab-bildungenes tun.' But Nolde completed no more than the introduction to this book, and from 1911 the sketches were used for his still life paintings.