IN the preface to my book on Rubens's oil sketches I stated that many more sketches in this technique must have existed than the four hundred and fifty-six items I had described either as authentic works of the master or as copies of genuine sketches the originals of which have disappeared. It is gratifying to report that several interesting additions to my catalogue have emerged during the last few years.

ON 4th February 1631, Michael Ophovius, Bishop of 's-Hertogenbosch, recorded in his diary that he had visited his friend Peter Paul Rubens at home that day to discuss his funeral monument. Although this entry, and the con-sequent probability that Rubens designed the bishop's wall-tomb (Fig. 17) in St Paul's, Antwerp, has been known since the diary's rediscovery at the beginning of the nineteenth century, further research on the monument has suffered from the lack of documentation and from a persistent impression that it had been extensively altered at some stage. This is especially unfortunate since it is the only extant monument of several that have been attributed to Rubens. Recent examination of the sculpture can provide a key for the reconstruction of Rubens's original programme and for an attribution of Ophovius's effigy to Hans van Mildert.

PETER Paul Rubens turned his attention to the subject of pure landscape late in his career; it was not until the decade between 1630 and 1640 that landscape as a theme became of absorbing interest to him. With the acquisition of a country residence, the ChAteau de Steen, in 1635 Rubens absented himself more and more from his Antwerp townhouse, preferring instead the pleasures of life in rural Flanders. In so doing, it is altogether understandable that he should turn his hand to recording the virtues of country living.

AT a recent sale in Amsterdam, the British Museum acquired a black chalk study attributed to Nicolaes Maes depicting Three orientals in discussion (Fig.29). The name of Maes's teacher, Rembrandt, is written no less than three times on the recto (and twice more on the old mat), and it is the purpose of this note to demonstrate that these inscriptions, while of no documentary value in themselves, are not misleading.

THE biblical story, related in Genesis XLVIII, of Jacob blessing his grandchildren has acquired a twofold Christian significance. On the one hand the preference of the younger brother over the older was interpreted as indicating the superiority of the younger Church over the older Synagogue; and on the other, the exchange of Jacob's hands was seen as a symbol of the Cross. The second concept in particular has often been given expression in representations of the blessing scene, Jacob's crossed hands being depicted in a prominent manner (Fig.35). It is therefore surprising that in Rembrandt's famous painting of the subject, dating from 1656 and now in Kassel (Fig.36), Jacob does not cross his hands at all.

THE city of Bergamo is to be congratulated for having organised a stimulating international conference on Giovanni Morelli and the history of connoisseurship in the first week of June, Giovanni Morelli e la cultura dei conoscitori. Morelli is only the third art historian to have been honoured in this way, the others being Giorgio Vasari and Roberto Longhi. The conference was accompanied by an exhibition at the Accademia Carrara, and two volumes of studies on Morelli were also published in an attempt to present all the material currently available for Morellian studies, now a thriving Italian industry.