S. MARIA DEI MIRACOLI in Venice (Fig.l), described by Sabellico soon after its erection as second only to S. Marco, has always attracted admiration, initially for its rich display of rare and expensive marbles. For the twentieth century it has come to serve as a model of the Venetian early renaissance style, supposedly unaltered since its completion five hundred years ago this year. Yet, as this article will show, its appearance as it evolved up to the eighteenth century, when Pittoni's St Jerome altar-piece was painted, was very different from the embalmed Quattrocento building we see today.

ST ROSALIE OF PALERMO is the subject of several well-known paintings by Anthony van Dyck,' though, surprisingly, no drawings identified as representing her have been universally accepted into his oeuvre. Van Dyck may well have felt a special affinity for the young hermit saint, for her relics were twice introduced into a city in which he happened to be living at the time - Palermo in 1624 and Antwerp in 1629- giving him the opportunity to produce imagery in her honour. The discovery of a cycle of prints illustrating her life designed by Van Dyck now confirms both subject and attribution of a drawing long associated with the saint as well as shedding new light on Van Dyck's activity as a narrative artist.

ONLY IN QUITE recent times have the personality and work of Hieronymus Bosch been interpreted against the cultural and socio-economic background of the Netherlands of the period, and of 's Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc) in particular, the town where the painter spent the greater part of his life. The most valuable contributions from this point of view have been made by Bax and Vandenbroeck. The former has explained how Bosch's apparently puzzling imagery is to be interpreted as a visualisation of contemporary Dutch sayings, while the latter has given a deeper dimension to the exegesis of Bosch's paintings by relating his entire iconography to the mentality of the bourgeoisie of 's Hertogenbosch.  The predominant element in this mentality was a pronounced utilitarian ethic, which held the exercise of moderation to be the highest virtue and associated sin with behaviour contrary to social norms. Poverty was held to be blameworthy and to be a consequence of human misbehaviour which was censured strongly in all its manifestations.

RUBENS's LETTER of 14th January 1611 to Dr Johann Faber, lamenting Elsheimer's early death and talking cryptically of how he could never forgive those who brought him to 'so miserable an end', has often been discussed. It has not been noticed that a humanist friend of both Rubens and Faber committed similar feelings to paper in a Latin ode published in 1624, a work which (apart from the reference in Van Mander's Schilderboek) seems to be the earliest printed tribute to the German painter.

TWO drawings in the Kobberstiksamling in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, confirm the recent attribution of The Shudi Family in the National Portrait Gallery, London (Fig.30), to the German artist Carl Marcus Tuscher. Each sheet carries a preliminary study for the painting, one for the drapery of Shudi himself (Fig.29), the other for Mrs Shudi's right hand holding the newspaper (Fig.31). The painting follows the sketches closely, with some minor adjustments to the positions of Shudi's arms and legs.

COMPOSITIONAL DRAWINGS with figures are rare in Piranesi's oeuvre, so the reappearance of a sheet of this type is noteworthy (Fig.32). In the case of this particular drawing, the fact that the principal figure is copied exactly from a celebrated painting by Titian can hardly fail to add to the work's interest.

DURING his thirty-seven years as British envoy to the Court of Naples, Sir William Hamilton amassed a large collection of antiquities, paintings, and other objects in addition to his famous collections of vases. When it became necessary for him to leave Naples because of the deteriorating political situation and his own role in affairs of state, he wished to send back to England as much of these collections as he could.