On 13th May 1572 Gregory XIII Buoncompagni was elected pope and, with his sights on the Holy Year of 1575, began completing the decorations of the Vatican palace left un- finished by his predecessors. Foremost was the embellishment of the Sala Regia (Fig.4), which was entrusted to Giorgio Vasari who enlisted the collaboration of his friend Don Vincenzo Borghini for the programme and a host of painters and sculptors to expedite the execution. The newly enriched audience hall was unveiled on the feast of Corpus Christi, 21st May 1573,1 when Gregory immediately turned his attention to the adjacent Cappella Paolina (Fig. l).2 Here Vasari was commissioned to devise a decorative programmefor the vault and the narrow vertical fields flanking Michelangelo's last frescoes, the Conversion of Paul and Crucfixion of Peter on the lateral walls (Figs.2 and 3).3 Our knowledge of this project stems from ten well-known letters written by Vasari, Borghini, Gregory XIII's Secretary of State Cardinal Tolomeo Galli, his Cardinal Nephew Filippo Buoncompagni, and Alessandro Musotti the Bishop of Imola,4 including an undated letter from Borghini to Vasari detailing the elaborate invenzione, or iconographic programme which formed the basis for Vasari's decorative scheme.5

The visual culture of Spain was virtually unknown in eighteenth-century Britain. Few Grand Tourists ventured into the peninsula, where the roads and hostelries were uninviting and the capital was said to offer nine months of winter followed by three of infernal heat. Inevitably, therefore, the artists of Spain's Golden Age were underappreciated by Britons, though an awareness of Murillo had been stimulated by late seventeenth-century and, early eighteenth-century collectors such as Lord Godolphin, Sir Paul Methuen, Lord Harrington and Sir Robert Walpole.1 If Velazquez was admired at all, it was for his portrait of Pope Innocent X, which could be seen in Rome, rather than for the full range of his art, contained as it then was largely within the walls of the Royal Palaces of Madrid and in the churches and houses of Seville. Nor did prints serve to broaden the view, some later ones being positively misleading, so that while Velazquez's name may have been familiar from publications, his work was still far from being established in the British artistic consciousness. Indeed, when the Water-seller of Seville and the Young men at table arrived in Britain in 1814, they were listed as by Caravaggio in the first inventory of the Duke of Wellington's collection.2

The catalogue raisonne of paintings and drawings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti lists a water-colour of the Nativity produced in 1855 forJohn Ruskin, which has been thought to be a lost work.1 I shall argue that in 1856 it was converted into the central section of the water-colour sketch (Fig. 19) for The Seed of David, executed in oil for Llandaff Cathedral in Wales between 1858 and 1864 (Fig.20).2 I shall also discuss a hitherto unrecorded study for the composition in a British private collection (Fig.23). This drawing, although it has a provenance from friends of Rossetti, the artists Henry Tanworth Wells and Joanna Wells (nee Boyce), who owned a number of other works by the artist, has been overlooked in the literature.3

Among the superb collection of sixteenth-century drawings in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, there is a design of the 1540s by Dirck Crabeth (c.1510-74) for a stained-glass window (Fig.25).' The overall contours and the proportions of the glazing divisions show that it was meant for a specific window on the north side of the choir of St John's church in Gouda. We do not know whether the design was in fact realised: if so, the stained-glass must have been destroyed in the fire of 1552 when the church was completely gutted.2

In 1965 Peter Cannon-Brookes published in this Magazine a small painting of the Ascension of Christ with Sts Agnes and Helena in the Ashmolean Museum (Fig.26) - the attribution of which to Giovambattista Naldini had first been made by Philip Pouncey' - and identified it as a modello for a now-destroyed altar-piece once in S. Maria del Carmine, Florence. Cannon-Brookes discussed several drawings in the Uffizi by Maso da San Friano (Figs.27 and 30) that were evidently intended for the same altar-piece,2 and also provided a chronology of the commission, including a possible date for the transfer of work from Maso to Naldini. Since the publication of his note, three additional preparatory drawings by Naldini related to the composition have come to light, one in the Louvre (Fig.28), one in the Ashmolean (Fig.31)3 and the other in a private collection (Fig.29). The Louvre and private collection drawing clarify the evolution of the lower register of the Ascension, that in the Louvre more closely resembling the composition in the modello. The purpose of this note is to publish newly discovered documentary evidence which informs us about the patronage and vicissitudes of the altar-piece.

A drawing of high quality in the Louvre, traditionally attributed to Antonio Tempesta (Fig.32), has until now resisted all attempts to determine its original purpose and date.l The sheet contains a design for a richly decorated aedicule supported by columnae rostratae (columns perforated by prows). At the centre of the aedicule is a blank panel awaiting an inscription. The segmental pediment above is anchored by two crowned sirens holding a swag composed of a turban and oriental arms which spill out of the tympanum; above these is a blank escutcheon surmounted by a crown. There are similar crowns above the capitals of the columnae rostratae, the shafts of which are studded with anchors. The aedicule itself is set in an Ceared' (orecchiato) frame which echoes the form of the inner panel, which is adorned with yet more oriental trophies; arrows, spears, and shields bearing crescent moons. At the pedestal level are more martial spoils, including flags, stacked next to four turbaned captives chained to the monument. In the lowest register is a blank cartouche, suspended between two lions' heads: on it is an old inscription 'Mano di Antonio Tempesta'. This attribution is borne out by stylistic comparison with documented drawings by the artist, especially those studies for prints which bear the legend 'Tempesta invenit'.2 Furthermore) the orientals in the Louvre sheet are very reminiscent of similar figures in Tempesta's drawn battle scenes (Fig.33).

In November 1848, soon after the founding ofthe Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti announced his intention to produce a series of illustrations to Dante,' a taskwhich, in one form or other, was to occupy him for the rest of his life. One of his finest early drawings on this subject, The salutation of Beatrice of 1849-50 in the Fogg Art Museum (Fig.38),2 displays evidence of his use of Camille Bonnard's Costumes Historiques, a pictorial source previously identified as important to the Pre-Raphaelites during the first and only shared period of their work from 1848 to 1853,3 but not hitherto associated with this drawing.4