The painting known as the Estouteville triptych (Figs. 1 and 3) was first published in this Magazine in 1922.' Six years later it was acquired by Lord Lee of Fareham and passed with his collection into the Courtauld Institute Galleries in 1958 (bequeathed 1947), since when it has been somewhat neglected in the art-historical literature. This is surprising in view of the paucity of surviving triptychs from Northern Europe dating from around 1400, and can be explained only by the uncertainty surrounding the painting's origins.

Despite Rogier van der Weyden's stature among his contemporaries and his sustained influence over Northern European art both during his lifetime and after his death in 1464, much about his life and art remains frustratingly vague because of meagre surviving documentation and the difficulties of confirming core works among the output of his shop and many followers. One area of inquiry that may yet contribute much to a sharper definition of his artistic identity is the study of his materials and technique, especially as the information gained from the most important surviving source - the paintings themselves - may turn out to support or to contradict the assumptions and opinions that still remain the basis for most judgments concerning works in the Van der Weyden group. Such study has significantly improved the understanding of one work in particular, the Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John in the John G.Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Fig.23), which has elicited varied and sometimes directly conflicting scholarly opinions through the decades. Research carried out between 1981 and 1990 has done much to amend and consolidate our understanding of this work, settling some questions that could previously be addressed only speculatively.

In 1937 Max Friedlander devoted renewed attention to a small group of paintings by an anonymous Franco-Flemish master of the end of the fifteenth century, known as the Master of Saint Giles after two remarkable paintings in the National Gallery in London. One depicts the Mass of St Giles (Fig.27), in which an angel informs the saint during celebration of mass that a grievous sin committed by Charlemagne has been forgiven, and the other St Giles and the hind (Fig.25), in which the Visigothic King Flavius kneels to ask forgiveness after St Giles had been wounded by a huntsman in pursuit of the saint's pet hind.' According to Friedlander, these were originally part of an altar-piece of which two further panels have survived,2 both now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, with scenes generally known as St Leu healing the children (Fig.26) and St Remy baptising Clovis (Fig.28).

In an article published in this Magazine in 1992 Jeroen Giltaij made a solid step toward defining Isaack van Ruisdael's artistic achievement by convincingly attributing four paintings to him.' The present notice adds another work to his oeuvre, a river scene with barges, houses, and a limekiln (Fig.39) in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.2 As with all the paintings now assigned to Isaack, it was formerly attributed to his celebrated son Jacob.3 Gerson disputed Jacob's authorship in 1934; for him it was a typical work by Wouter knijff,' an ascription accepted by subsequent cataloguers.5

A painting of St Mark the Evangelist (Fig.46) in the Royal Dublin Society can be firmly associated with the late work of the seventeenth-century Amsterdam painter, Salomon Koninck (1609-56). The painting was bequeathed to the Society in 1864 from the estate of Mrs Grace Kean (b.1777/78) of Cheltenham, England, as 'a Painting of St. Mark & the Lion, supposed to be by Rembrandt'.' It was first attributed to Koninck in 1915, when it was briefly listed in an appendix to a history of the Society,2 but has been entirely overlooked in the literature on the artist.3 The Dublin painting has much in common with a number of works by Koninck which represent aged bearded men alone in shadowed interiors, characterised either as anonymous scholars poring over massive folio volumes or as misers weighing coins or precious metals, perhaps allegorising the vice of avarice.4 In particular, it is stylistically close to Koninck's Scholar at his desk in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick, which is signed and dated 1649.5 A comparable palette of warm golden hues and a fluid application of paint, visible especially in the deep curvilinear folds of the garments, would suggest that the Dublin painting originates from around 1650.