Few artists' lives can be as well documented as that of Agostino Tassi (1580-1644); perhaps even fewer would lend themselves equally well to the writing of a novel. Unfortunately, the wealth of archival material tells us relatively little about Tassi's work. His output remains enigmatic, attributions difficult, a reliable chronology almost impossible. On the one hand we have scarcely understood the painter's singularity, while on the other we have failed to put him into context and have underestimated the influence he exerted on other artists and his own responses to the development of painting in Rome.

Despite the recent emphasis given to seventeenth-century Roman workshops, the precise extent of Bernini's involvement in his shop's projects remains poorly understood.' The correspondence discussed here and partially transcribed in the Appendix below, concerning transactions between Bernini, his disciple Mattia de' Rossi, and a distant patron, the cardinal Rinaldo d'Este, casts light on the creative workings and material production of the seventy-year-old artist's studio and provides a rare view into Bernini's atelier in the years after his return from Paris.

In his brief account of OttavianoJannella (1635-61; Fig.29), published in the 1730s, Lione Pascoli predicted that the 'maravigliose e maravigliosissime' micro-miniature carvings of this sculptor - barely visible to the naked eye and so delicate that ordinary breathing caused them to move - stood little chance of survival.' Miraculously, however, what can be identified as six of Jannella's boxwood carvings, his tools, his spectacles and an engraved portrait have indeed survived, preserved in a glass case the size of a small shoebox. Jannella's 'Monumentino' (Fig.30) resurfaced at auction in 1981,2 and was purchased by Lord Thomson of Fleet who has loaned it since 1998, together with other rare Kleinkunst, to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

The theme of David concerned Guido Reni throughout his life. Malvasia mentions among the artist's earliest works a copy in the collection of the Marchese Tanari of the 'vulgatofamoso Davidde col paggiotto del Pordenone',1 and Reni pursued such subjects until shortly before his death, his most celebrated example being the David in the Louvre, and the autograph version of it formerly on loan to the National Gallery, London.2 The purpose of the present article is to publish a recently discovered half-length treatment of David with the head of Goliath in the collection of Joshua Latner (Fig.41), a composition of which there exists what can now be recognised as a somewhat later variant (Fig.42),3 which should therefore be re-dated to the last years of Reni's activity, completing the reconstruction of Reni's life-long treatment of the subject.

Like many of his contemporaries with literary ambitions, Giovanni Lotti (d. 1688) made art the subject of some of his poems.' Lotti was born in Ripomarance in Tuscany,2 and for much of his professional life he was a member of the household of Cardinal Antonio Barberini the Younger in Rome.3 From 1641 to 1644 he taught Logic at the University of Rome, the Sapienza.4 Late in his life he entered the service of Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, Viceroy and Gran Conestabile of Naples, to educate the latter's sons.5 A member of numerous academies, he enjoyed the esteem of his contemporaries and was honoured, for example, in the verse of Carlo Mazzei, a widely admired teacher and poet and member of the Piarist Order.' Lotti's own poetic output is varied, ranging from celebratory sonnets to libretti for oratorios; his works were edited posthumously by his nephew in 1688, the year of Lotti's death.7