In the past two decades the name of the Spanish diplomat Juan de Lezcano has become familiar to students of Orazio Borgianni. It was to Lezcano that Borgianni dedicated, probably in 1615, his etching of St Christopher (Fig.3) made after the painting he had executed for Lezcano.' In the artist's will of 30th November 1615, he appointed Lezcano - described as 'l'illustre signor Giovanni de Lescano secretario dell'Illustrissimo et eccellentissimo signor Don Francesco Conte de Castro Imbasciatore del Catolico Re di Spagna appresso Nostro Signore' - as one of his executors and also bequeathed him a small painting of the Crucifixion and a sword.

In November 1661 Cardinal Rinaldo d'Este received a letter from his Roman agent discussing the suitability of various Roman artists for a major fresco cycle. This document, first published in 1892, has always been taken to refer to a project for the palace rented by the Este family in Rome,' but the recent recovery of the rest of the correspondence now makes clear that it concerns a series of frescoes planned by the artist Pietro da Cortona for a suite of six rooms in the new Palazzo Ducale in Modena (Fig. 18). In a sequence of letters written between September 1661 and February 1662 (see the Appendix below), Rinaldo's Roman agent, Girolamo Muzzarelli, chronicles the development of this project which, had it not been abandoned, would have been Pietro da Cortona's last, and perhaps his grandest, cycle of dynastic frescoes, surpassing those in the Palazzo Pitti in size, and unusually including explicit references to modern history. Besides illuminating the complicated process of devising a large-scale fresco-cycle at long distance, the letters underline the different attitudes towards the conception of such cycles in the ducal capitals of central Italy as opposed to papal Rome.2 They provide a rare glimpse into the workings of Cortona's studio and the process of iconographic invention,3 and also reveal the artist's mature beliefs about painting.

The document published in the Appendix below contains transcripts of interrogations carried out on 11th and 12th July 1597 by the notary of the Tribunal of the Governor of Rome, Tommaso de Richis, in the course of preliminary investigations of a criminal case which never came to court. A significant figure in the enquiry was the young Caravaggio, who was little known at the time, such fame as he had deriving from his position in Cardinal Francesco del Monte's household.' Although Caravaggio himself did not give evidence, his physical appearance is vividly described, almost in the manner of a photographic snapshot, by one of the witnesses, recalling the 'self portraits' which the artist inserted around that date in paintings such as the Taking of Christ in Dublin and the Martyrdom of St Matthew in S. Luigi dei Francesi of 1599-1600. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first extended reference to Caravaggio to be found in contemporary documents.2 The incident, trivial enough in its details, gives us a suggestive glimpse of the street life of Rome in the period and furnishes a few details concerning Caravaggio's friend Prospero Orsi and about an early dealer in his work.

The artistic personality of Domenico Fiasella, a painter much admired from his own day into the nineteenth century, has only recently received scholarly attention after a long period of neglect,1 and his artistic formation in his native Genoa before his departure for Rome in c. 1606-07 has now been clarified.2 His long Roman sojourn was evidently crucial for bringing his style up to date,3 but this phase of his development has been difficult to chart since the documentary evidence has hitherto been limited to fleeting references in 1615 and 1616,' before he returned to Liguria in the spring of the latter year. As Mary Newcome has recently pointed out, 'Fiasella's artistic activity remains still to be defined in Rome'.5

In spite of extensive research over the past two decades, only a few firm dates are available for the work of the Calabrian painter Mattia Preti,' and for the first two decades of his career the documen- tation is particularly meagre.2 The present study focuses on the large Triumph of Love (Fig.31),3 which was in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum from 1972 until 1992 when it was sold at auction as an early work of Mattia Preti, dateable to the early 1640s.4 Art historians have, however, not been in agreement about the painting's attribution: Luca Giordano, Andrea del Lione and Pietro Testa have all been put forward as possible authors,5 and the painting has so far been ignored in the literature on Preti.

In 1672 Bernini's protege Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Il Baciccio, was commissioned to decorate the dome, pendentives, vault, tribune and apse of the Gesu in Rome.' Bernini had wielded considerable influence over the General of the Society of Jesus, Gian Paolo Oliva, to secure the commission for Baciccio against his rivals Carlo Maratti, Lanfranco's student Giacinto Brandi and Pietro da Cortona's pupil Ciro Ferri. This was, of course, one of the most significant fresco commissions of the time, and Baciccio began work on the Vision of Heaven (Fig.33) covering what was then one of the largest domes in Rome that same year. Bernini played an important collaborative role in developing this composition, one that can be best understood by examining his surviving drawings for the project.