RECENT exhibitions and the publication of Eleanor Tufts's catalogue raisonn of the works of Luis Melkndez have drawn attention to the questions surrounding the centrepiece of the painter's oeuvre, a series of forty-four still-life paintings. These, which were listed in an early nineteenth- century inventory of the royal palace at Aranjuez and are mentioned by Cein Bermuldez in his biography of the artist of 1800, are today identified with thirty-nine paintings in the Museo del Prado, four in the collection of the Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, and one in the Museo Nacional, Valladolid. In her monograph, Tufts relates the 'scientific objectivity' of these paintings to the growing interest in botanical studies during the second half of the eighteenth century. Two unpublished documents in the Archivo General del Palacio, Madrid, now show that several of these paintings were indeed appreciated as scientific illustrations of Spain's natural bounty by the Prince and Princess of Asturias (the future king Charles IV and his wife, Maria Luisa), who commissioned further works with that purpose in mind. The first document (see Appendix I, below) is Melkndez's own account of the delivery (Entrega) of several paintings to Charles and Maria Luisa on three different occasions during 1771 and 1772; the second (see Appendix II, below), dated January 1778, is an unsigned draft of a report written to settle a dispute with the artist about payment for these works.

TOURISTS wanting typical souvenirs from Majorca often return clutching crudely fashioned figurines in the form of penny-whistles, painted in striking accents of colour on a predominantly white ground, which at first sight look remarkably like maquettes for sculptures by Miró. In fact, these whistles became emblematic of Miró's work, and when the artist stayed with Roland Penrose for his retro- spective exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1964, he too, appropriately, brought one of them with him as a present.'

IN 1985 all five of the still lifes that could then be confidently attributed to Juan Sinchez Cotin were brought together in one gallery at Fort Worth, Texas. This unique opportunity to appraise the artist's achievement not only reinforced the view that he was among the most forceful and original artists of his generation, but also provided the basis for a clear assessment of his way of painting. In the catalogue of the exhibition, I reviewed the documents which form the basis of our knowledge of Sinchez Cotan's life and work, including the inventory that was taken of the contents of his studio on 13th August 1603, just after his departure from Toledo for Granada, where he went to pursue a new life as a Carthusian lay brother. Three of the still lifes listed in that inventory appear to be among the artist's autograph works which survive today, and were exhibited in Fort Worth. A further two are known in surviving copies, so that in 1985 the compositions of five of the twelve still lifes mentioned in the 1603 document were known. Now another has come to light and can be added to his oeuvre. The Still life with cardoon and francolin (Fig. 16), a hitherto unknown, signed still life of great beauty and characteristic elegance, represents the most significant addition to the artist's oeuvre since the discovery of the San Diego Quince, cabbage, melon and cucumber (Fig.20) in the 1940s.

PICASSO's admonition that '... it is not sufficient to know an artist's works - it is also necessary to know when he did them, why, how, under what circumstances...' has prompted speculation about his Night fishing at Antibes (Fig.23), painted in August 1939. It was Alfred Barr who insisted that, 'Both in composition and mood this nocturne seems altogether exceptional in Picasso's art.'