In the dimly-lit courtyard of the Palazzo Martellini in Florence stands a larger-than-life-size marble statue of a nude youth, an impressive but enigmatic work of the later Florentine Cinquecento (Figs. 1, 2 and 3).' Since it was first recorded around the turn of the century, the figure has lost little of its mystery. Scholars still disagree about both its subject and its authorship - despite the signature 'IOANNIS FANCELLII F. SCHERANI OPVs' on the stony outcrop supporting the left leg (Fig.4). But a re-examination of the evidence suggests new and definitive answers to both these questions. The purpose of this article is to suggest that the statue represents a Youthful Jupiter (reviving a theme common on Roman coinage), and that its signature (which scholars have incorrectly identified with various members of the Fancelli family) refers to Giovanni di Alessandro Fancelli, also called Giovanni di Scherano or Giovanni Scherani (d. 1588). The career of this sculptor - an artist before now almost completely unknown - can be reconstructed with the help of newly discovered archival evidence (see the Appendix below). The documents reveal that Giovanni di Scherano was a figure of some importance in late-Cinquecento Florence, who received commissions from the Grand Ducal Galleria, the Opera del Duomo, and from eminent private patrons.

The development of Benvenuto Cellini's art after the completion of the Perseus in 1554 remains shadowy. Suffering terms in prison and the waning of patronage, Cellini completed few additions to an oeuvre that was already small. It is of some consequence, then, to come across an apparently unknown sheet of drawings from this period (Fig. 17) in one of the manuscripts containing his poetry. The designs are to be counted among the rare surviving works on paper that can be securely attributed to the artist, and their subject, as we shall see, makes them of even greater interest.'

Outside the precincts of the gardens of the Palacio Nacional de Queluz, situated at the end of a long avenue, beyond the canal and the Jardim das Medalhas, stands a fountain (Fig.2 1). But for many years no water flowed from its jets, its basin was littered with stones, and its marble statues were weatherbeaten and broken.'

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries England produced a number of highly competent carvers who drew inspiration from the genius of Grinling Gibbons and sometimes worked alongside him. In some instances their work has wrongly been attributed to Gibbons himself, as has been and still is the case with Samuel Watson (1662-1715) of Heanor, who worked in wood and stone, alabaster and marble at Chatsworth House between 1691 and 1711. Although Samuel Watson's name occurs regularly in the payments made by the 1st and 2nd Dukes of Devonshire during these years, his work soon became associated with the name of Grinling Gibbons which appears nowhere in the Chatsworth accounts. It was not until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that Samuel's son and grandson, Henry and White, both of whom worked as carvers and masons at Chatsworth, revealed Samuel's drawings, accounts and contracts in a bid to honour his achievements.'

Compared with terracotta, marble or wood, unbaked clay is a medium relatively unstudied in the literature on renaissance sculpture. It is the purpose of this article to publish what appear to be the earliest known documents about the production of 'terracruda' sculpture in Italy, which also give some clue as to how it was valued and collected. In addition, they contain new references to three Florentine sculptors, Giovanni Francesco Rustici, Niccolo Tribolo and Antonio Solosmeo, as well as yielding the name of a previously undiscussed figure, the maker of the pieces in question.

Now that the life and work of Giuliano Finelli (1601-53) have been fully studied,' he can be seen as more than merely one of those minor figures who composed the self-effacing entourage of the Pope's favourite, Bernini. Younger than Bernini by less than three years, Finelli, a native of Carrara who trained in Naples, was from 1619 to 1628 the first and - until the arrival of his countryman Andrea Bolgi, in 1626 - the only major collaborator in the most important of Roman workshops. During his short career as an independent artist in Rome (1629-35), Finelli stood out as one of the most innovative artists in portraiture and sepulchral sculpture, while in Naples, where he established himself in 1635, he swiftly became the leading sculptor of the city, carrying out numerous figures of saints for the Cappella del Tesoro di S. Gennaro, the largest set of bronze statues ever created in Italy.

Grinling Gibbons's activities as a sculptor in stone have received much less attention than his work as a woodcarver. Although his documented practice was quite extensive, there has been some scepticism about his merits as a figural sculptor, and a tendency to dissociate much good work in stone from Gibbons's name precisely because of its high quality.' It is not my purpose here, however, to enter into any controversy over the canon of Gibbons's sculpture, but rather to draw attention to a hitherto unknown document, firmly associating his name with the monument of Archbishop Dolben in York Minster.