On 22nd July 1652, Bartolome Esteban Murillo testified before the Archbishop of Seville during canonisation hear- ings for Fernando III, the medieval king of Castile and Le6n who had 'reconquered' Seville for the Christian Crown in 1248.' The painter declared that ever since he had enjoyed 'use of reason', he had seen 'infinite portraits' of the saintly monarch in many houses, churches and convents in and around Seville (see the Appendix below, Document 2). Indeed, Murillo was surrounded by images of San Fernando all his life, and encounters with his home-town's patron saint marked distinct stages in his career. Art historians have anatomised Murillo's contributions to the elaborate fiestas staged in honour of the new cult dedicated to San Fernando in 1671.2 Less well known, however, is the painter's involvement in the actual canonisation proceedings of the late 1640s and early 1650s, which is recorded in detail in the documents presented here. These documents give a new context for the artist's later work as a painter for the cathedral, and an analysis of them yields some suggestions about the role of images as historical evidence in the seventeenth century.3

In 1869, Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote with enthusiasm both to his mother and to Jane Morris about the 'extraordinary architectural works' by Sara Losh, 'a church of a byzantine style and other things', which he had just visited in the village of Wreay, outside Carlisle. Her designs were, he said, 'full of beauty and imaginative detail, though extremely severe and simple', much more original 'than the things done by the young architects now'. Losh, he added, 'must have been a really great genius, and should be better known'. He thought her buildings so advanced that he expressed the wish that Philip Webb, the designer of William Morris's Red House, could come to Wreay and see them for himself. Losh, he wrote, was 'entirely without systematic study as an architect, but her practical as well as inventive powers were extraordinary'.'

Despite his years spent in the studios of Achille-Etna Michallon andJean-Victor Bertin, Corot is often presented as a virtually uninstructed artist, almost an autodidact. However, in the last few decades art historians have begun to advance a completely different view of the artist, informed by a better knowledge of his life and oeuvre, and a deeper understanding of his artistic evolution.' Nonetheless, there has been no indisputable evidence up to now that Corot ever set up his easel (Fig.21) in the galleries of the Louvre, in front of the great works of the old masters. Alfred Robaut and Etienne Moreau-Nelaton firmly stated that he did not make such studies, claiming that when he entered the Louvre Corot preferred to sketch the visitors or the copyists themselves, rather than the paintings on the walls.2 Certainly his carte de copiste has never turned up, although it is in any case unlikely that Corot would have preserved such a document. However, a thorough search in the registers at the Louvre does indeed yield evidence of his enrolment there as 'Corot. peintre. Rue Jeuve des Petits-Champs 39. Enregistre le 29 juin 1822'." Thus the link between Corot and the art of the past is established at exactly the time he took his first formal steps as an artist (the earlier years from 1815 to 1821 remain more obscure). It is tempting to suppose that he entered the Louvre on the advice of Michallon, whose studio he joined in Spring 1822, and who died on 24th September that same year.

During the summer and autumn of 1844, Theodore Rousseau spent a six-month period of study in the Landes region in the company of his close friend, Jules Dupre, and his pupil, Felix Haffner.' Although Rousseau never went again to this region or, indeed, the South of France, this visit inspired one of his most important works, described by his biographer, Alfred Sensier, as 'l'expression la plus haute de son art'.2 This painting, Ferme dans les Landes, had been thought to be lost, having last appeared in public in an exhibition of French painting that travelled to South America in 1940.3 The picture has, however, recently come to light in a Portuguese private collection (Fig.24). The present owners remember that their father acquired it in Paris at some point in the 1940s although they do not recall the circumstances of the acquisition.4

In a letter of 10th September 1868 Courbet wrote to his friend and patron Alfred Bruyas: 'I have been obliged to absent myself for a few days.'1 He said nothing further about this trip, and his reference is unusually discreet for an artist whose frankness and volubility were legendary. As outlined in that same letter, Courbet left the following day for Le Havre, where he was exhibiting eight paintings, and a few days after that for Ornans to paint 'some more new pictures' that would be 'really sincere and socialist'. Little attention has been paid to the earlier trip alluded to by Courbet, which has been passed over as an insignificant interlude.