Research into the influence of the tapestry designs of Raphael and his pupils on Flemish artists during the second third of the sixteenth century has largely focused on the impact of the cartoons - rather than the tapestries woven from them - as it was the former which would have been most accessible in the Brussels workshops.' Indeed, the structure of the low warp loom on which the majority of tapestries were then made concealed the front of the tapestry during the weaving process,2 and completed hangings would have been seen only by the audience around the eventual owner. Yet, while these circumstances ensured that the tapestries themselves played a lesser role in the dissemination of aesthetic ideas to the Flemish artistic community, the opposite was the case with rich patrons and their circles elsewhere. Quite apart from the attention which the cost of high quality weavings would have elicited, the fact that such valuable hangings were often only displayed on special occasions would have dramatised their significance. Documented commissions are, therefore, an important reflection not only of the response of patrons to new designs but also of the visual influences to which they and their circles were exposed.

From the exhibition reviews of the mid-Victorian period, two artists called Frederic Leighton seem to emerge.* First, there is Leighton the High Artist, the ambitious and accomplished painter of serious subjects from history and scripture, including Cimabue 's celebrated Madonna carried in procession through the streets of Florence of 1855, Dante in exile of 1864 and the Old Testament subjects of the 1860s.  The critics found this Leighton easy to approve: adept at describing and evaluating works with significant narrative content and strongly-characterised figures, they delighted in writing about pictures such as the Dante (Fig. 16), explaining the historical circumstances that drove Dante into a cruel exile from his native Florence to the dissolute court at Verona and drawing out the moral implications of the story.  They delt particularly on the contrast between the austere figure of the poet and the frivolity of t the Veronese courtiers. Virtually all tlle critics of the Royal Academy exhibition of 1864 applauded these contrasting characterisations as demonstrating a valuable moral lesson.

In 1455 Pesellino was commissioned to paint an altar-piece for the church of the Compagnia dei Preti in Pistoia showing the Trinity with four Saints. The saints chosen were St James as patron saint of Pistoia, St Zeno as patron saint of the clergy of Pistoia, and St Jerome. The treasurer, Piero di ser Landi, particularly requested that the fourth saint should be St Mamas. Pesellino died in July 1457 before he had finished the altar-piece and in October 1458 the painting was taken to Filippo Lippi's workshop in Prato to be completed. It was eventually delivered to the Compagnia dei Preti in Pistoia in June 1460. This is a brief account of circumstances which are extremely complex and exceptionally well-documented.

There is little information about the early career of the distinguished Spanish humanist, painter, sculptor and writer on art, Pablo de Cespedes. No documentary evidence about him survives from before 1577 - the year in which he returned to Spain from Rome, where he had been active for some seven years as a painter of fagades and churches. To the two published references concern- ing that year - he is recorded as being in Cordova on 12th August, and as taking up his post as racionero in the Cathedral there on 7th September' - should be added another: a letter dated 13th September 1577 in the collections of the Hispanic Society of America (see Appendix I below),2 which throws some light, however foggy, on his Roman connexions and on his friend and associate Cesare Arbasia.

At the Carracci exhibition at Bologna in 1956 there was presented for the first time a painting from the Accademia, Venice, of St Francis adoring the Cross (Fig.29) attributed to Annibale, the youngest of the three Carracci. The attribution, which was due to Roberto Longhi, won general acceptance.' At the time of the exhibition Gian Carlo Cavalli dated the picture around 1585, Denis Mahon thought it 'close to the Parma Pieta', and Donald Posner placed it in 1585-86.2 There matters have stood until very recently, when a painting in Palazzo Corsini, Rome, of identical composition to that in Venice, and considered simply a copy of it, was cleaned.3 It is now possible to see that the Roman painting is clearly superior in quality to the work in Venice and must be the autograph original (Figs. 30 and 32). The purpose of the present short note is to report on this significant discovery.4

Demonstrating both courage and confidence, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York decided to share with the public last year the knowledge that its extensive collections of Goya paintings, drawings and prints include, besides many masterpieces, a fair number of works of unjustifiable or uncertain attribution.' By putting its entire Goya collection on display, this major institution prompted public discussion of a particularly positive and rewarding kind about issues normally raised in notes of scholars' opinions, tucked away in a museum's departmental files or debated in the pages of specialist periodicals.

Spain was the inevitable point of reference for the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Francesco I (1541-87) and Ferdinando I (1549-1609; Fig.48) were both half-Spanish by birth, through their mother Eleonora de Toledo. In 1562-63 Francesco spent a full year at the Spanish Court before assuming the powers of Prince Regent of Tuscany in 1564. Don Pietro de'Medici (1554-1604; Fig.49), the younger brother of these two Grand Dukes, made two Iberian marriages and lived much of his life in Spain as a political hostage.' In the next generation, Cosimo II (1590-1621; Fig.56) reinforced the Spanish alliance by marrying Queen Margarita's sister, Maria Maddalena d'Austria. Philip III contributed two hundred thousand scudi to his sister-in-law's dowry, and after much negotiation, agreed to address the Grand Duke as 'hermano'.

On 31st October 1864 Sir Charles Eastlake, Director of the National Gallery, climbed to the fourth floor of 55 boulevard Beaumarchais in Paris, to call on a M. Burger (Fig.57). Eastlake was on the lookout for the paintings of an artist whose rare works were as yet unrepresented in the National Gallery -Jan Vermeer of Delft. The French critic and historian was the recognised authority on Vermeer, and already acclaimed as the 'rediscoverer' of the little-known Dutch artist. Burger was also well known for his pioneering archival researches and championship of the seventeenth-century Dutch school generally and for his critical reappraisals of several lesser known painters - but none more remarkable than the mysterious Vermeer, whom he dubbed his 'Sphinx'.' When Eastlake consulted him, it was also for his first-hand knowledge of the art market - what was where, and at what price.