DANIELE da Volterra remains an enigmatic figure in mid-sixteenth-century Italian painting. Supported by Michelangelo, Daniele was the only serious challenger to Salviati's dominance of Roman painting, following Perino del Vaga's death in 1547. As few of his paintings survive, his drawings are the essential documents for establishing this sculptor/painter's personality. Daniele is understandably famous for his finished studies in black or red chalk. This article introduces new material which casts light on other more obscure aspects of Daniele's working methods, including a pen and wash com-positional sketch by one of his collaborators, Marco Pino, some preparatory black chalk figure sketches by Daniele himself and, finally, some suggestions for Daniele's assistant, Gian Paolo Rossetti.

German baroque painting is not, on the whole, a privi-leged area of art history. Adam Elsheimer and Johann Liss are of course exceptions, but they produced the bulk of their work in Italy and had relatively little impact inside Germany. Both artists have been honoured with exhibitions which have materially enhanced the critical perception of their paintings and drawings.

A rapid glance through the critical literature on Giambat-tista Tiepolo's career in the service of Charles III reveals all the ingredients of a Victorian melodrama. Urbani de Gheltof wove tales of a fictitious mistress and of Mengs's jealousy of Tiepolo; Molmenti was concerned by Tie-polo's formal declaration of poverty, when he was obvi-ously a wealthy man; Sanchez Canton dramatically out-lined the character of the King's Confessor, Padre Eleta (Text Fig.A) as an Inquisitorial figure hostile to Tiepolo's art; Morassi viewed the artist through veils of courtly intrigue spun by Mengs and Eleta; and Muraro spoke chillingly of Giambattista's tragic end and secret burial. As a result, scholars concur in evoking an atmosphere of unease and tension at court, fed by the rivalry of Mengs and the antipathy of Eleta, which culminated in the replacement of Tiepolo's seven altar-pieces for the royal foundation of S. Pascual Baylon at Aranjuez with works by Mengs, Francisco Bayeu and Mariano Salvador Maella. So potent is this myth of hostility that the eventual fate of the altar-pieces in the nineteenth century, when three of them were cut up presumably for easier sale, has been seen as a direct consequence. Tiepolo's sojourn as court artist in Madrid from 1762 to 1770 merits review both because of the shaky foundations upon which long-standing critical conventions are based, and because of some new information regarding Tiepolo and Mengs at court.

WHICH of the Carracci, Ludovico, Agostino or Annibale, was first in contact with the Farnese has remained until now difficult to establish. According to Donald Posner, the Mystical marriage of St Catherine, dated by scholars to 1586-87, was among those works Annibale painted for Ranuccio Farnese, who was Duke of Parma from 5th December 1592. This information is, how-ever, far from certain. According to Charles Dempsey it was Ludovico who made contact with the Farnese in 1593. How-ever, in the spring of 1593 Ludovico, who does not seem to have been directly associated with the Farnese, was working in Parma on the paintings for the catafalque of Duke Alessandro, which had been commissioned by the city council and not by the Farnese. A new document (Appendix 1; Doc.1) confirms earlier links of patronage with Agostino Carracci alone; soon after his brother Odoardo was named Cardinal (6th March 1591), Ranuccio ordered Agostino to engrave his impresa.

IN Rubens and Italy, Michael Jaff6 includes in his discussion of Rubens's copies after Michelangelo two black chalk drawings on the recto and verso of a sheet in the Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden. This sheet, first attributed to Rubens by Jaffé, bears on the recto the Faun's mask from the 'Night', a detail of Michelangelo's sculpture; and on the verso a drawing which Jaffé considered to be a study from life and to which he gave the title A pack-mule grazing (Fig.28).

TWENTY-FIVE years ago Erwin Panofsky published for the first time a small painting, at one time in Amsterdam, of the story of Erigone - seen unveiling the grape-cluster in which her lover Dionysus is disguised - which he attributed to Guido Reni, in view of its 'apparently very good quality'. I concur in this view and publish here the painting after its recent cleaning, which has resolved the mystery that puzzled Panofsky (Fig.30).

DURING the last two years the showing of the Italian seicento school at the National Gallery has been markedly improved by the purchase of major works by Giordano and Rosa. Of com-parable importance, however, has been the cleaning of seven seicento paintings from the collection: and no less than nine have been reframed or had their frames restored. Apart from the general improvement in appearance of this part of the collection (Gallery 29, in which the paintings hang, has be'n completely redecorated), one or two small art-historical question marks can now be removed from the catalogue.