DESPITE the scholarly attention received by Giovanni di Paolo's predella fragment in the Lehman Collection, New York, one aspect of its subject matter has been overlooked (Fig.1). The arrangement of the zodiacal signs and the location of the Sun in the cosmological diagram coincides with an established tradition of the thema mundi, an astro- logical depiction of the Creation of the World. This raises some interesting questions about the subject of the Lehman panel and about the use of astrological symbolism in late medieval and renaissance art.

A VOLUME of financial records of the Perugian Confra- ternity of S. Andrea della Giustizia, which notes what was owed to and by the Confaternity in the years from 1464 to 1510, records a commission to Bartolomeo Caporali and Sante di Apollonio for a 'tavola' and predella. Eighteen florins were disbursed to the two painters for this pupose, in a series of payments which include ones dated between October 1475 and April 1476 (see Appendix). It will be argued here that the work for which they were paid still survives and is to be identified with the triptych and predella in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, no.230, attributed to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and known as the Giustizia triptych (Fig.17).

SINCE the publication of Vincenzo Marchese's Memorie dei piu? insigni pillori, scultori e architetti domenicani in 1845 it has been known that Fra Bartolommeo visited Venice for a period of two to three months in the spring of 1508. In the light of this knowledge we have become accustomed to noting reflections of the artist's Venetian experience, in matters both of pictorial handling and of motif, in the group of works he produced immediately after his return to Florence. Sometimes - although more contro- versially - it has also been suggested that the Florentine himself contributed towards the formation of the heroic figure style of such early monuments of Venetian high renaissance painting as Sebastiano del Piombo's organ shutters for S. Bartolomeo di Rialto, or Giorgione's frescoes for the Fondaco de' Tedeschi. Yet the actual circumstances of Fra Bartolommeo's Venetian visit have hardly been discussed at all, not even in relation to the one work actually commissioned from him for a Venetian destination: the God the Father with Sts Mary Magdalen and Catherine of Siena, dated 1509 and now in Lucca (Fig.25).

IN A little corner room of the National Gallery, Prague, is a collection of small panels in variable condition and of generally uncertain attribution, a feature as much of the general neglect of the schools to which they belong as of the paintings themselves. Most of them were painted in North Italy in the later fourteenth century, and their considerable range of style reflects the great variety in the art of a region which already benefited from intensive industry and from trade with a large part of Europe. Two of these paintings can, I think, be attributed - one to a significant minor figure and one to a great artist.

PONTORMO's S. Michele Visdomini altar-piece (Fig.38), dated 1518 and located in situ on the second altar in the right nave of the church, is generally considered to be a revolutionary work in the history of sixteenth-century Florentine painting.' The un- balanced design, with the Virgin slightly displaced to the right, has been characterised as a deliberate, even antagonistic, break from the canon of so-called high renaissance altar-pieces, as exemplified by those of artists such as Fra Bartolommeo.2 The possibility that some aspect of the charge to Pontormo from the person who ordered the work may have inspired this innovative composition has not been considered. This note will examine Pontormo's painting in light of newly discovered Wills made by the patron, Francesco Pucci. I hope in this way to give a more precise focus to previous analyses of the content and composition of the altar-piece, which have been based on an over restricted view of Pontormo's invention.

BECAUSE of the great artistic and historical interest that attaches to the decoration of the abbatial apartments of Gioanna da Piacenza in the Convent of S. Paolo in Parma, any new piece of information about them is inherently valuable. This note con- cerns the beautiful carved and intarsia frieze placed in the camerino next to the famous 'Camera di S. Paolo' frescoed by Correggio, which has recently been installed in the modern entrance to the apartments. As it originally appeared in the camerino, the frieze bore in the centre of each wall an image of Gioanna's pastoral staff and coat of arms encircled by a tail- devouring winged snake (Fig.40), and to either side appeared a motto, one in Latin and the other in Greek. Thus there were eight mottos altogether, alternating Latin and Greek, and four coats of arms with the pastorale and serpente. It was Panofsky's great merit to have identified three of the four Latin inscriptions with their sources in classical literature: IOVIS OMNIA PLENA (Virgil, Eclogues, III.60); ERIPE TE MORAE (Horace, Carmina, III.29.5); and SIC ERAT IN FATIS (Ovid, Fasti, 1.481).' The fourth motto, however, SVA CVIQVE MIHI MEA (Fig.41), he was unable to identify.

IN 1973 the National Gallery, Prague, acquired a panel painting of the Flagellation of Christ (Fig.46), purchased from an antique shop as by an anonymous sixteenth-century Italian painter and with no previous provenance. Its northern Italian characteristics are immediately apparent, and its conception and execution allow it to be attributed with some certainty to Bernardo Zenale or an artist from his immediate circle.