Recent research in the State Archives in Florence has brought to light evidence which has a direct bearing on the decoration of the Camaldolese monastery of S. Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti in Florence. These newly discovered documents are being used in connexion with studies pursued both jointly and separately by the authors of this article. The first such study, which considers the decoration of the monastery's high altar, is presented here, followed by a second, assessing the implications of the documents for Lorenzo Monaco's altar-piece in the National Gallery, London (see p.723 below).

This article seeks to argue that the documentary evidence concerning the high altar-piece of S. Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti, presented in the jointly-written article above, can be connected to the altar-piece with the Coronation of the Virgin attributed to Lorenzo Monaco now in the National Gallery, London.

Although the earlier provenance of the small Madonna by Giulio Romano now at Apsley House (Figs. 10 and 15) remains to be ascertained, its first recorded appearance is attended with credit. Anton Raphael Mengs believed it to be a collaborative work by Raphael and his pupils and, in a letter to Antonio Ponz, stated that the Virgin's head was by the master himself, of 'equal merit to any of his works, being full of life and spirit'.' Ponz agreed, and mentioned the picture among those in the 'Cuartos del Principey la Princesa' in the Palace in Madrid, a fair compliment since there was no shortage of masterpieces to choose from there.2 The Madonna was engraved in 1785 by Bartolomeo Vazquez and a painted copy may have been made about this time.3 Arriving in England among paintings captured by the Duke of Wellington at the battle of Vitoria, the Madonna was praised by Benjamin West who said that it and Correggio's Agony in the Garden, also now at Apsley House, 'ought to be framed in diamonds'.4 This was the high point of the Madonna's stock; its subsequent fall was steep. For Passavant it was merely 'an old copy of the Madonna della sedia', and he was followed, if with more enthusiasm for the painting, by Waagen who called it 'an old and excellent copy of the Madonna della sedia... ascribed to Giulio Romano'.5 Crowe and Cavalcaselle ignored it and, apart from its appearance as by Giulio in Evelyn, Duchess of Wellington's catalogue of the collection, it disappeared from Anglo-German scholarship until Dussler's Raphael catalogue, in which it was again called a copy of the Sedia.

In 1976 Miklos Boskovits identified a previously unknown and still untraced panel representing St Anthony Abbot as a work by Fra Angelico dating from the second half of the 1430s (Fig.26).' He reasonably proposed that it had originally constituted a lateral leaf of the same altar-piece from which came a predella panel of St Anthony Abbot tempted by gold, now in Houston (Fig.25), which has often been considered to be by Fra Angelico or his studio and to date from the same period.' The appearance and dimensions of the vertical panel are known only from a photograph in the Fototeca Berenson at I Tatti,3 but the accuracy of Boskovits's proposal concerning the association of the two paintings is strongly supported by the existence of a later work, a Florentine engraving in Pavia dated c. 1460-70 by Hind (Fig.27).'

Since the mid-Cinquecento, the splendid but fragmentary Medici villa on Monte Mario in Rome has been referred to as the Villa Madama (Fig.28).' This name was first associated with the complex when it was owned by Margarita of Austria, known as 'Madama', who was the illegitimate daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and was married to the first Duke of Florence, Alessandro de' Medici, assassinated in 1537.' The purpose of this note is to present new evidence concerning the name intended for the villa, which was begun c. 1518, during the lifetime of its primary patron, Giulio de' Medici, who was elevated to the papal throne as Clement VII in November 1523.

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, has recently acquired a Mystic marriage of St Catherine (Fig.33), a fine example of Paolo Veronese's early work, which can be firmly placed during his years in Verona before his first Venetian commissions of 1550-51. The early date is confirmed by heraldic and documentary evidence, and helps clarify the sequence of works in Paolo's Verona period.

The purpose of this note is to publish a previously unnoticed contract for a processional banner ordered from Vasari by the confraternity of the Trinity in Arezzo in 1570 (see the Appendix below). This provides new evidence that the painting of the Three angels appearing to Abraham in the Plain of Mamre, now in the Museo di S. Salvi in Florence, once formed half of this banner together with the Trinity and Sts Donato, Francis and Bernard by Vasari surviving in the church of SS. Trinita, Arezzo (Figs.41 and 43).' In fact, the S. Salvi canvas has a recorded provenance from the Aretine church, but the two paintings have not hitherto been associated in the scholarly literature. Indeed, the canvas in S. Salvi has been dated on stylistic grounds to c. 1550,2 over twenty years earlier than the date of 1573 normally given for the Trinity.

In an article published in this Magazine in 1966, John Gere examined the sequence of drawings for the Assumption of the Virgin in the Pucci Chapel in S. Trinita dei Monti in Rome (Fig.47),' assigning them variously to Taddeo Zuccaro and his brother Federico, and confirming that, while Taddeo, who died on 8th June 1563, had begun the fresco, it must indeed have been completed by his brother Federico much later in 1589, as is stated in the inscription at the foot of the sarcophagus. The purpose of this note is to draw attention to a further drawing in Cologne which can be inserted into this sequence, and to suggest that Federico finally gave this commission a personal stamp by inserting his own portrait into the fresco.