WHEN Van Dyck returned to London in 1632 to work for Charles I, one of his first tasks was to restore Titian's Galba from the series of Roman Emperors, acquired shortly before with the Mantuan Collection. At the same time he was asked to paint a copy of the Vitellius, which had been 'utterlie spoyled by quicksilver',1 and, as the colours of the original were 'washed qijt away', he almost certainly had to rely on the engraving by Aegidius Sadeler for much of the detail. The commission was far from being a menial task for a court painter, and his payment for re-creating the Vitellius was twenty pounds, about the same sum that he might have expected for a half-length portrait at this time.2 It is also worth noting that it was Van Dyck rather than any of the other artists employed by the king - includ- ing Rubens - who was thought to be capable of re-creating the Titian. When Van Dyck used the pose of the Otho from Titian's series (Fig.1) for his half-length portrait of Charles I in armour (Fig.2), the king must have appreci- ated the allusion, although it has been overlooked in more recent times. Van Dyck's almost single-minded passion for the works of Titian, the large group of paintings by him which he owned, as well as the number of painted copies after Titian in his collection, all marked him out as the great Venetian's disciple and heir.

AN effectively forgotten painting by Van Dyck (Fig.26) of which the exceptional interest and importance was promptly recognised by Derek Johns,' has recently been discovered
in a family collection in the Low Countries. Since then it has been cleaned, relined and, to the very small extent necessary, retouched in London. The painting will be on show in the Van Dyck exhibition which is due to open to the public on 11 th November of this year at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

WHEN Marie de Medicis was in Antwerp in 1635, she visited the studio of Anthony Van Dyck and there, according to her secretary, Pierre de la Serre, saw 'le cabinet de Titien: Je veux dire tous les Chefs d'ceuvre de ce grand Maistre'.' While Van Dyck's collection was well known to contemporaries, our knowledge of its exact contents and its fate after his death in London in 1641 has until now been limited to an inventory of about 1644 in the Austrian National Library, Vienna, first published in 1922 (see Appen- dix I ofJeremy Wood's article on p.680 above). The purpose of the present article is to publish and discuss a number of documents which can help us to reconstruct the composition of Van Dyck's collection and its later history. They also shed light on the fate of the contents of Van Dyck's studio and add to our very limited knowledge of the identity of his studio assistants in London." These documents are drawn from two different sources - records of the Court of Chancery and the Wittewronge family papers - but they relate to the same extremely complicated legal claims and settlements concerning Van Dyck's collection after his death.

A previously unpublished letter sent to William Trumbull by Thomas Locke gives a new date for Van Dyck's arrival in England at the beginning of his 1620-21 visit, and raises the question of who was responsible for inviting him. William Trumbull was central to artistic relations between the Low Countries and England in the early years of the seventeenth century. He was English agent in Brussels when English patrons first acquired pictures by Rubens, and it was he who had to make the first approach to Rubens about painting the Banqueting House ceiling.' Thomas Locke lived in London, where he was Clerk of the Privy Chest. He was an old acquaintance of Trumbull's who kept him informed of comings and goings at court.

IN 1987 a double portrait by Thomas De Keyser was presented to the National Gallery of Victoria (Fig.39). It is signed with the artist's monogram and dated 1636, both inscriptions appearing on the base of the corinthian column on the left. The painting was once in the collection of Lord Hampden and was probably sold in 1834, changing hands several times since then before being purchased by Eric Morgan through Sotheby's in 1953.

IT has long been known that Rembrandt's workshop was populated by an unusually large number of younger painters. Although the fact struck contemporaries such as Joachim von Sandrart,' and was well-known to later writers, it may not always have been taken into sufficient consideration in discussions of Rembrandt attributions. We tend to forget that these young artists - many of whom had learned the rudiments of their craft with another master - were obliged by guild regulations to work in their master's style and that they also came to Rembrandt with the avowed intention of acquiring his manner, then considered a
fashionable novelty. Once this is realised, it becomes clear what problems are to be expected when trying to distinguish between the master's work and that of his assistants.