THE four tapestry cartoons purchased by the National Museum of Wales were first published in this Magazine in March 1983 and were further discussed in subsequent contributions in the same year. We publish below new information on their provenance and iconography. This article extends in the light of researches earlier this year, and where necessary modifies, the arguments put forward by Michael Jaff6 in issues of this Magazine for March (pp.136-51) and for August 1983 (pp.480-87). Peter Cannon-Brookes, in undertaking campaigns of research in Milan, is deeply indebted to Conte Franco Arese Lucini, Donna Maria Bergamasco Visconti di Modrone, Conte Massimiliano Caccia Dominioni, Professore Gian Alberto Dell'Acqua, Don Giulio Melzi d'Eril and Mr Robert Miller; and in Rome to the staff of the Archivio Segreto Vaticano.

IN the Spring 1958 issue of the Wadsworth Atheneum Bulletin, Evan H. Turner presented a detailed discussion of a series of Philosophers painted by Jusepe de Ribera. Since that writing, new evidence has appeared to document the attribution to Ribera (which has been doubted, although the paintings are signed and dated), and photographs are now available of the entire series (Figs.6-13).

ROBERTO Zapperi provided us in the March issue with valuable new documentary evidence relating to the connections between the Carracci and the ducal family of Parma, the Farnese. Unfortunately this welcome contribution lost rather than gained from the inclusion of a paragraph containing some not very carefully considered comments on the subject of the degree of trustworthiness of our prime seventeenth-century informant on Bolognese painting, Carlo Cesare Malvasia, as a source for sources.

THE subject of the Flight into Egypt in conjunction with the painter Adam Elsheimer immediately conjures up in one's mind the famous painting now in Munich - probably the most magical picture Elsheimer ever painted. Those references in old inventories or catalogues, that mention a Flight into Egypt, as far as they are precise at all or could be traced, appear mainly to have been to copies or versions of the Munich picture. One of the earliest is 'Een Vliedinge naer Egipten naer Elsheimer, genombreert  no.98', in the inventory of Herman de Neyt (15th-21st October 1642), but as it is without any measurement or indication of format, it is of no help. However, another quite tiny Flight into Egypt has now resurfaced, which is totally different in composition from the Munich version (Col.Fig.A).

THE recent appearance of the hitherto unknown Mercury and Argus (Fig. 18) by Carel Fabritius (1622-54), published by Christopher Brown on p.797, is of the greatest importance for our under-standing of one of Holland's most gifted artists. Until now only eight or nine known paintings could be attributed with certainty to the master, hence any addition to his oeuvre is of great significance. Although differing in style, colouring, and composition from well known paintings by Fabritius, such as the Sentry (Schwerin), the Goldfinch (The Hague), the View in Delft (London) and the two so-called self-portraits (London and Rotterdam), the Mercury is without doubt by the same artist.

LAST year in these pages (March, 1985, p. 164) the only criticism this writer could offer in a review of Hugh Macandrew's 1984 exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland, Dutch Church Painters: Saenredam's 'Great Church at Haarlem' in Context, was that No.35 in the exhibition was not, as claimed, by Emanuel de Witte, but was something much more rare: a previously unpublished portrait of an actual church by the founder of the genre in Delft, Gerard Houckgeest (Fig.25). My book, Architectural Painting in Delftlists only nine pictures by Houckgeest that represent real church interiors, and rejects about twenty that have been advanced as such.

FROM time to time, as much in science as in art history, a theory is proposed which is sufficiently attractive or interesting for it to be absorbed rather uncritically into the literature of the period. Such a theory concerns the Brazilian landscapes of the Dutch artist Frans Post, who is supposed to have composed his paintings by looking down the wrong end of a Galilean telescope. Currency has now been given to this notion in certain general works, as for example in Elliott's account of the discovery and development of the New World and its relations to the Old.

SIGNED and dated ambers are exceedingly rare, and the appearance of a hitherto unknown amber cannon on the London art market provides an important touchstone for the dating and locating of other ambers lacking such precise identification (Fig.32). Dated 1660, and inscribed 'MICHAEL SCHODELOOK FECIT GEDANI', (Fig.31) it was produced during a period when amber-working flourished, by a leading artist in Danzig (Gdansk), one of the major centres of amber-working along the Baltic coast.

BY the mid-eighteenth century frame-making was an established trade in this country, generally combined with gilding, the supply of looking glasses, picture restoration, and, often, art dealing. It was no longer merely one aspect of the business of a cabinet maker, carver or joiner (which is not to say that the cabinet makers ceased to make frames). Throughout Western Europe in the early part of the century the independence of the framemaker from the artist, and the architect, increased, as did the independence of the colourman. In England, where the chief business of the painter was portraiture, the sizes as well as the types of portrait were standardised, which must have greatly facilitated the efficient supply of prepared canvases and of frames outside the artist's studio - indeed the artist's suppliers may have prompted the standardisation.