Wit the emancipation of distinct genres of painting in the course of the sixteenth century, collaborations between accomplished masters became a common practice, especially in the domain of landscape painting. Joachim Patinir, considered to be the first specialist in this field, had, for example, worked occasionally with the history painter Jan Matsijs. In this article three landscape paintings by the Flemish- Roman painter Paul Bril, the most influential Italianate landscape painter of his time, will be discussed: one is certainly a collaborative work, with the figures painted by Johann Rottenhammer; the second may either be a collaboration with Elsheimer or a homage to that artist; and the third is usually thought to be a collaboration between Bril and Rubens but can be shown to have been radically changed by Rubens after completion.

Carlo Ratti and other Genoese sources give only a summary idea of the complex cycle of frescoes and stuccoes that decorated the choir of the now destroyed church of S. Domenico at Genoa.

In Annibale Carracci's Choice of Hercules (Fig.28) on the ceiling of the Camerino Farnese in Rome, the elegant figure of Virtue points not only to the winding path that should be followed by the hero, but to Pegasus, the winged horse, seen on the summit at the upper left. This detail has long been recognised as an impresa of the Farnese family,' for whom the work was painted. While such emblems were often included in the frescoed decorations of palaces, it can now be shown that - more exceptionally - Annibale included another family impresa in one of his last canvases for the Farnese, the famous Sleeping Venus (Fig.27) now in the Musde Conde, Chantilly.

When I published an article two years ago in this Magazine on a large Crucifixion by Rubens commissioned by the Archduchess Isabella as a gift to Sir George Calvert in the spring of 1622, I was able to establish little more of the subsequent history of this mysterious picture than that Calvert presented it in 1625 to the Duke of Buckingham.' Since then Caroline Hibbard has very kindly drawn my attention to a little-used printed source which leads to the remarkable conclusion that this painting later hung in the chapel built for Queen Henrietta Maria at old Somerset House, and that it was tragically destroyed there in March 1643 by two members of the House of Commons and their soldiers.

The publication last year of the long-awaited Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701-1800, compiled from the archive of Sir Brinsley Ford by John Ingamells, will lead to the resolution of many art-historical problems. A reference quoted in the dictionary from Robert Mylne's papers makes it possible to identify the sitter of two portraits by Batoni formerly in the Sondes collection at Lees Court, Kent, one now in the National Gallery, London (Fig.37),' the second in a private collection (Fig. 36). A miniature of the same sitter, also by Batoni, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Fig.38).