SIX separate woodcut versions of Titian's Triumph of Christ were produced in the sixteenth century.* One of them is known in two states, the first dated 1543, with the address ofJoos Lamprecht in Ghent, and a second undated, but later state with the Antwerp address of Margaret, the widow of Corneille Liefrinck (Rosand and Muraro I; Fig. 1 a-j); there is also a rather rough, anonymous copy of it (Rosand and Muraro V). The other four are all known in single Italian editions: the Gregorio de' Gregoriis version of 1517 (Rosand and Muraro II; Fig.2a-e), the Lucantonio version and the variant of it by Andreani (Rosand and Muraro III and IV), and finally an anonymous version (Rosand and Muraro IV).

IN current television news programmes, a number of visual 'headlines' is presented, a moment before the subject of these 'headlines' is announced. If the image of a painting appears, it almost certainly means it has been sold for a high price or has been stolen. If the image of an artist, necessarily well known, appears, it almost certainly means that artist is dead. A photograph of Andy Warhol appeared as the last 'headline' of the BBC1 news at 6.25p.m. on Sunday 23rd February 1987. The power of this image ironically made us know that Andy Warhol was dead a split-second before a voice said so.

THE Wednesday-Thursday Gallery which opened in 1932 was the invention of a Mrs Cochrane, one of those English-speaking women who, with no special talent, feel a need to become involved in the arts. From a busy family life she was able to spare two days a week for the enterprise, selling greeting and Christmas cards and inexpensive wood- cuts. A year later came the first change when she was joined by the vivacious, energetic and charming Austrian, Mrs Ala Story. They telescoped their names into 'Storran'. The next development came with the arrival of Frank Coombs and the gradual withdrawal of Mrs Cochrane. The last change was in 1936 when I myself had the good luck to buy the business, and thereafter, apart from a few months when Ala Story gave some help, the Storran was exclusively the concern of Coombs and myself.

THE BENAKI MUSEUM in Athens has recently acquired through the generosity of the A. Leventis Foundation an icon of St Georgeslaying the dragon (Fig.23). The panel measures 40.8 by 37.5 cm. and bears the inscription in Greek in the lower left-hand corner 'Heir Angelou' ('by the hand of Angelos'), showing it to be the work of the Cretan painter recently identified as Angelos Akotantos. There is no date on the picture, but the painter's signature helps to date it to the first half of the fifteenth century. The work is significant both because of the importance of its painter and for the light it sheds on fifteenth-century painting in Crete.

IN 1901 Herbert Horne showed that Uccello's three battle-pieces in London, Florence and Paris represented the Rout of San Romano and were identical with those recorded in the camera di Lorenzo in the Medici inventory of 1492. He assumed that they hung in line in the then unidentified room and dated them to the 1450s, when the Medici palace was being decorated by Gozzoli and others.

'VARIEE, sincere, naive,fine et juste, Mmine Aim&-Azam's description of Gericault's letter from Rome to his friend Dedreux-Dorcy, would fit any of the others which have come down to us. Gericault was that rare thing among French artists of the early nineteenth century, a natural epistolary talent. He entertains, charms, and leaves an impression as vivid as if he had been talking to one face-to-face.

BURY ST EDMUNDS' Museum Service in Suffolk owns a major portrait by James Tissot which has not previously been recorded in any of the published literature relating to the artist. It depicts Miss Sydney Isabella Milner-Gibson, and was bequeathed to the Borough of St Edmundsbury together with other family portraits by her brother George Gery Milner-Gibson in 1921 (Fig.38). From 1923 until 1959 it was displayed in the town library, and then transferred to the Art Gallery. Considering that the portrait has been on public exhibition in the town for more than sixty years, it is perhaps surprising that it has been neglected by art-historians, especially during the last decade when Tissot's reputation as an artist has been receiving increasing critical attention and acclaim. It is not mentioned in Christopher Wood's book,1 nor in Michael Wentworth's monograph, the most definitive work to date.2 Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz only became aware of its existence in 1984 when she was organising a major exhibition of the artist's work at the Barbican Centre (in London), but then it was too late to consider it for inclusion and in any case at that time it was undergoing restoration at Kenwood House.3 Now, having been cleaned and restored at the studio of the Area Museums Service for South East England at Kenwood House, it is to be exhibited with the other Cullum portraits in the Manor House when it opens as a new borough museum in two years' time.

THE work of Alex Sundukov, Maksim Kantor and Lev Tabenkin presents the Soviet art world with an unwonted challenge. They are a group of young figurative painters who take a look at society in a way which is completely at odds with the platitudes of Socialist Realism. They deal with themes which have long been ignored in official Soviet art, from the grim daily round of life in Moscow to the taboo subjects of concentration camps and ideological indoctrination. Although these subjects have previously been tackled by unofficial artists, this trio of painters is significant for two reasons. First, they are members of the Artists' Union and work inside rather than outside the official structures of exhibitions, commissions and so forth. Their work thus cannot be marginalised by the establishment as anti-Soviet - indeed, the amount of exposure it has received in exhibitions and in the media indicates that it has the implicit support of powerful factions. In this respect, they are pre-eminent among those artists whose activity is today threatening to invalidate the old distinction between official and unofficial art.