As with many artists of the eighteenth century, biographical information on Francis Towne is patchy and inconclusive. Paul Oppe collected much material for his article of 1919, which, coinciding with the disposal of the remains of Towne's studio from Barton Place, near Exeter, ensured the artist's re- emergence following a century of neglect.' Forty years later Adrian Bury presented much the same information in a monograph,2 and a partly conjectural picture of Towne's life has evolved: born in Devon in 1739 or 1740, educated at William Shipley's drawing school in London and winner of a Society of Arts premium in 1759 before he returned to Exeter, where he remained between sketching tours to Wales in 1777, Italy and Switzerland in 1780-81 and Cumberland in 1786. New research now provides the following biographical details which overturn some received assumptions about the circumstances of Towne's life and work.

By the early 1820s the slow refashioning of the Bank of England was virtually complete, although the final thrust, the rebuilding of the last sections of the curtain wall, was finished only in 1827.John Soane's assorted array of public buildings at Westminster were by then also more or less finished - the Houses of Parliament and the Law Courts in 1824, the Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices in Whitehall, and related works in Downing Street a year or two later; only the New State Paper Office was yet to come.' In 1825, Soane, at the age of seventy-one, thought to commemorate his final achievements in the form of a publication. George Dance, had died in January that year, and Soane must have been all too aware that there was no volume to record his revered mentor's works.

Alonso Sanchez Coello had a long and successful career as portrait painter to Philip II. For over thirty years he produced likenesses of the Spanish Habsburg court, and his serene, aloof images painted in a precise and analytical style owe much to his master, Anthonis Mor. Yet, surprisingly, only one surviving example of the many portraits he must have painted of the king, the Philip II in armour at Pollok House, Glasgow, has hitherto been accepted as authentic without dispute.' Now a portrait (Fig.24) in the Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, which shows the king in his sixtieth year (1587), can be added to Sanchez Coello's oeuvre.2 This work is particularly significant, for not only is it an addition to the iconography of Philip II, but it also dates to the final years of the painter's life, a period for which we have few works. More importantly, it provides a missing link in the development of the Spanish court portrait from Mor to Velazquez.

In accounts of Pre-Raphaelitism John Brett is generally described (together with his fellow landscape artist, Inchbold) as a disciple of John Ruskin, but our knowledge of their relationship has hitherto been largely based on the references to Brett in Ruskin's Collected Works. The discovery of seventeen previously unknown letters from Ruskin to Brett covering the years 1858-63 casts a good deal of new light on this relationship,' and two of them in particular, in which Ruskin offers Brett artistic advice, are of especial significance (see the Appendix below).

Charles Robertson & Co. were among the most important artists' colourmen in nineteenth-century London, and Frederic Leighton was one of the company's most valued customers. It was founded in 1819 and by the time of Leighton's return to England from Capri in summer 1859 was entering its most prosperous and prestigious period. Its customers included members of the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood, British and European royalty and Sir Charles Eastlake, then President of the Royal Academy. In the provision of materials for both amateur and professional artists Roberson rivalled the longer established firms of Reeves and Rowney and the royal warrant-holders Winsor and Newton. Leighton operated an account with the firm from July 1860 until his death, in which his expenditure reflected his growing prosperity and standing, both professional and social.' The account reveals Leighton as cautious and conservative in technical matters, believing in the 'importance of settling everything before hand'.2 In his choice of materials there are few indications of his early training in continental Europe, apart from the occasional purchase of French canvas and colours, and his highly finished paintings were produced by a combination of painstaking preparation, sound technique and trusted materials from his colourman.

Although the most conspicuous and costly state gifts sent to Spain by the Medici Grand Dukes consisted, on the whole, of carriages,' jewellery and rich textile hangings, various works of sculpture and painting also figured prominently.

Two principal versions of Raphael's portrait of Tommaso 'Fedra' Inghirami are currently known: one in the Pitti Palace in Florence (Fig.43), and the other in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (Fig.44); a third is in the Palazzo Inghirami in Volterra. While the last is certainly a copy, opinions have varied about which of the first two is Raphael's original.' Some have called the version in the Pitti an early copy, some have seen in it the hand of a pupil of Raphael's, and others have claimed that the true Fedra is the painting in Boston; it has also been suggested that both the Boston and the Pitti versions were painted by Raphael, perhaps with the help of assistants.