THE highly original composition of Velåzquez's Toilet of Venus in the National Gallery (Fig.2) has provoked much speculation as to its significance and sources of inspiration. In particular, there appears to be no direct precedent for the life-size depiction of a reclining female nude shown from the rear, unless as part of a group; and none for a Venus. That the picture derives, in general terms, from Velåzquez's knowledge of sixteenth-century Venetian poèsie has long been recognised, but two independent stories that it was specifically painted to be a pendant to an earlier, Venetian, picture of a reclining nude have not been investigated. New visual and documentary evidence now make such an investigation possible.

THE recent restoration, by Peter Banks of the Wallace Collection conservation department, of the Boulle marquetry console table F56 (Fig.10), has emphasised the quality of this early eighteenth-century piece and has, it is hoped, returned it to a state more closely resembling that in which it left the workshop of Andre-Charles Boulle.

GIANLORENZO Bernini's monumental projects for St Peter's basilica completed the cathedral's decoration and freed future popes to direct their attention to the enhancement of other churches in the Holy City. When Giovanni Francesco Albani assumed the papacy in 1700 as Clement XI, he made the embellishment of St John Lateran, the seat of every pope as bishop of Rome, a major priority for his reign. During the previous pontificate, Innocent XII and his new Lateran archpriest, Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, had set aside considerable sums for the completion of the basilica's façade. Clement XI added 20,000 scudi to the façade project in 1705, but stipulated that the funds were to be disbursed only after the statues of the apostles long planned for the nave were in place (Fig. 15).

UNTIL now only one bozzetto for a ceiling decoration has been known by perhaps the most famous fresco painter of the late Genoese seicento, Gregorio de Ferrari (1647-1726). Now three further bozzetti by this artist have come to light which can all be related to executed frescoes. The fact that these preparatory oil sketches show slight differences from the executed works suggests that they were painted by Gregorio himself and are not copies by other artists. They help us not only to study more directly Gregorio's painting style of the decisive years between 1687 and c. 1692, but also demonstrate his efforts in the preparation of larger fresco decorations.

NEWLY discovered documentation published in the Appendix to this note shows that in 1768 Francis Harwood of Florence despatched to his patron, the Earl of Charlemont, a chimneypiece, which conformed in certain respects to a design published by William Chambers in his Treatise, but which in its composition and mixture of materials was totally avant-garde (Fig.28). This chimney-piece, it is believed, was destined for the Saloon of
Charlemont's Casino at Marino, near Dublin.

Delacroix's posthumous sale, held in Paris in February 1864, was one described as 'L'Aveugle de Jéricho', with dimensions given as 45 by 38 cm (Lot 111). Annotated copies of the catalogue show it to have been knocked down to the painter Adrien Dauzats for 1,406 francs. In his catalogue raisonne of 1885 (No. 171 ), Alfred Robaut identified this painting with an academy study of a model posing as a blind man, which measured 87 by 56 cm.
Pointing out that this life study by Delacroix was not an unfinished work and that its dimensions could never have corresponded to those of the Aveugle de Jéricho, I suggested in 1981 that the latter was possibly a canvas that had passed in a sale at the Galerie Charpentier on 16th June 1953 under the same title as Lot 111 in the posthumous sale, and listed as 48 by 40 cm (Lot 26,repr.). As there was no reference to its provenance in the sale catalogue and as it was known to me only from an illustration on which a judgment of authenticity could not be safely based, a more positive identification was not possible.

OVER the past twenty-five years, the identification of the figure in Edouard Manet's second frontispiece for 8 Gravures å 1'eau-forte (1862; Fig.l) as Polichinelle has gained widespread currency among art historians. That identification is, however, problematic for two reasons. First, it is very difficult to draw convincing links between Polichinelle and the other objects depicted in the print. Second, the figure lacks the hooked nose, tricorne hat, hunchback, swollen belly, stick and fanciful costume which formed Polichinelle's trademarks in France during the 1860s and which Manet employed consistently in his depictions of Polichinelle from the following decade (Fig.29).

The colloquium, La sculpture au XIXe siècle, organised last April by the Musee d'Orsay's dynamic curator, Anne Pingeot, and the Ecole du Louvre's director, Dominique Ponnau, proposed avenues of research for this newly rediscovered field and examined the sensitive issue of its neglected historiography. Its talks complemented the Grand Palais exhibition
on the same theme (reviewed in the June issue), as did the splendid excursion organised
by Pingeot and Antoinette Le Normand-Romain to the Rodin Museum in Meudon, the dépòt d'Ivry and the new Musée des Monuments Antiques in Versailles.