In the upper town at Bergamo, on the exterior of Palazzo Bellosguardo-Pellicioli at 29 Via Porta Dipinta, is a fifteenth- century relief (Fig. 1). It represents the Madonna and Child enthroned between St Paul, denoted by his sword, on her left, and in the place of honour to her right, St Peter with his keys. The Virgin turns her head and extends her arm in the direction of St Peter. Beneath the footrest of the Virgin's throne, an unfurled scroll, with an inscription in gothic letters (Fig.2), tells us that the relief belonged to the altar of Ser Pietro di Nicolo Franco's chapel erected in 1449: 'Hec cappella cum suo altari est Serpetri francho quondam ser Nicholai: lccccxl9.'

T Hhe visitor who enters the small Roman church of S. Maria in Publicolis will see on the left the memorial to marchese Antonio Publicola Santacroce and his wife, Girolama Naro (Fig.21), and on the right that to his son, principe Scipione Publicola Santacroce (Fig.22). Those curious to find out who was responsible for these tombs are likely to encounter at least confusion, and possibly error.

There has been some debate about the original location of Donatello's gilded bronze Crucifix, his first documented project for the Santo in Padua (Fig.33). The surviving archival evidence about the making of this sculpture is fairly well known.' In January 1444, the account books of the Santo mention a payment for iron to be used by Donatello for a Crucifix,2 and in June that year payments for wax for this sculpture are recorded. No document survives that specifies exactly when the figure of Christ was cast, but it may well have been between mid- 1445 and mid- 1446, a period for which the account books are missing.3 The sculpture was probably cast and chased by the end of 1448 since Donatello's assistant, Niccolo Pizzolo, is recorded as painting the supporting wooden Cross for the figure of Christ in January 1449. The 'diadema' (probably a halo) for Christ's head was also made and gilded in January and February of that year, and Donatello received a final payment 'per resto del Crocefisso' inJune.4

The low-relief sculpture of a Virgin and blessing Child presented here for the first time (Figs.34 and 37) had until a few months ago remained unknown in a deserted art-nouveau villa near Santa Maria di Non, a village a few kilometres north of Padua. The site, once known as Villa Bozza, enjoys a certain fame in the history of Italian renaissance culture as the location of the 'Nonianum', the country retreat built by Bernardo Bembo, where his son, the poet Pietro Bembo, often sojourned.' The relief, too, is clearly associated with Bernardo Bembo, for the convex parapet below the Virgin bears the family coat of arms in the particular form used by Bernardo: the wreath of bay and palm, surrounding either the arms or Bernardo's personal motto, 'virtus et honor,' appears in the books and manuscripts that belonged to him,2 on the monument to Dante he commissioned at Ravenna and on the back of Leonardo's portrait of Ginevra de' Benci.3 It would thus appear that the relief was most likely brought to, or even commissioned for, the Nonianum byBernardo Bembo himself, and has survived the later vicissitudes of the site. It is improbable that it would have reached there later, for the ownership of the Villa Bozza (now called Molini after the still operational mill built by Bernardo's father Niccol6) passed to the Gradenigo family in 1544, and the Bembo connexion was gradually forgotten.4

Any prospect of identifying the missing element of the altar of the Martini Chapel in S. Giobbe, Venice (Fig.42), must also offer a hope of resolving some of the stylistic and attributional issues sur- rounding both the design and the execution of this large-scale sculptural enterprise. The chapel, with its glazed terracotta ceiling and carved marble altar-piece, was commissioned by the Venetian merchant Giovanni di Pietro Martini sometime in the 1470s.' Its essentially Florentine character may be explained by the known connexions of the Martini family with that city and by the fact that Giovanni's wife, Cornelia, was descended from the Salviati of Florence: in his testament of 1475,2 Giovanni Martini left the completion of his chapel, which we may presume included the altar- piece, to Cornelia.

Vasari's life of Giovan Francesco Rustici relates how the artist carved a large marble tondo depicting 'una Nostra Donna col Figliuolo in collo e San Giovanni Battista fanciulletto'.' This relief, formerly installed in the audience hall of the Arte di Por Santa Maria (the Florentine silk guild) is now in the Bargello (Fig.46).2 Its date - as with most of Rustici's exiguously documented oeuvre - has remained a matter of some disagreement. The most recent study of the relief, by Charles Davis, follows the dating of 1505-06 tentatively proposed by John Pope-Hennessy, while Joachim Poeschke dates the work more broadly between c. 1503 and 1506.3 But it has generally been agreed that, since Vasari's biography mentions the Madonna before the bronze group of St John the Baptist preaching on the Florentine Baptistry, the tondo must perforce have been carved no later than 1506, when the Baptistry commission was awarded.4 However, a newly discovered document - the only contemporary reference to Rustici's Madonna - suggests that the sculpture was probably completed years later than has previously been throught.