Panini's painting in the Louvre of the musical performance given on 12th July 1747 at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, to celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin to Marie-Josephe of Saxony (Fig. 1),' commissioned by Cardinal Frederic Jerome de Roye de la Rochefoucauld, French ambassador to the Holy See from July 1746 to March 1748, has a hitherto over- looked private facet, which is important for a proper understanding of the painting, and throws new light on Panini's working methods.

The career of Jean-Antoine Houdon followed a pattern similar to those of other gifted young sculptors in mid-eighteenth- century France. Awarded the Prix de Rome in 1761, he attended the Ecole des Eleves Proteges in preparation for his study at the French Academy in Rome (1764-68). After his return to Paris he was granted the status of agree, allowing him to participate in the biennial Salon exhibitions; his submissions to his first Salon in 1769 essentially represented the religious and mythological works he produced in Rome.' By 1771, when Frederic-Melchior Grimm - and the court of Gotha - must have grown impatient with Guiard's procrastination over the mausoleum to the Duchess Louise Dorothea, Houdon had attracted the attention of the critics in Paris. Among the portraits he exhibited in the Salon that year was the bust of Denis Diderot, a work in which he conveyed an excellent and lively likeness in a sober undraped antique Roman format without a wig that corresponded perfectly to Diderot's taste.

One hundred and fifty years ago citizens of and visitors to Cheltenham enjoyed free access to a distinguished collection of old master paintings larger in size and scope than the national collection in Trafalgar Square.' The edition of Hours in the Picture Gallery of Thirlestaine House published in 1858, a year before the death of its ownerJohn Rushout, the second Baron Northwick (1769-1859; Fig.23), listed over nine hundred paintings in that house, then a short walk from the town centre.' There were in addition over five hundred paintings at Lord Northwick's family seat, Northwick Park in Worcestershire (now Gloucestershire; Fig.25), which was also, if less easily, accessible to the public. But the size of these collections is less remarkable than the catholicity, and at times daring novelty of taste that characterised them.

Before the emergence of the Grand Tour market for view-painting, vedute of villas and country houses were mostly commissioned by their owners - for reasons, it is generally assumed, of pride in possession, a desire to record a particular event or construction programme, or as a reminder of far-off buildings.' Such motivations must in most cases be inferred, since we rarely know much about the intentions of the patrons of such works. In the case of one eighteenth-century Roman commission, however, a pair of views by Adriaen Manglard (1695-1760) of the Villa Patrizi (Figs.39 and 40), for its owner, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Patrizi, we can obtain an unusually complete understanding of why the pictures were commissioned and the nature of the response they generated.

Art historians wishing to learn more about the apprenticeship of an artist active in the ancien regime are often thwarted by the nature of the sources, since in biographies of the period, the early life often constitutes the most obscure section. It is hard to be sure what credence should be attached to memories which may have been distorted by oral transmission and subsequently fixed in the biographical record. The deployment of different kinds of written evidence, and comparative analysis of the style of the supposed master and that of the pupil, where possible, can of course make it possible to confirm or refute an hypothesis. However, by far the best means of clarifying such problems is to find the relevant apprenticeship contract signed in front of a notary, or validated by a certificate. The pastellist Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (1704- 88; Fig.42) is an example of a celebrated artist whose formation remains uncertain.' If one is to believe the seemingly precise testimony of his biographer Mariette,2 La Tour was trained with the master painter of Flemish origin, Jean-Jacques Spoede (1683- 1757). Spoede seems to have specialised in mythological subjects, to judge from the livrets of the Salon and the handful of works which have come down to us.' However, Mariette's account is contradicted by La Tour's brother, according to whom Maurice-Quentin was apprenticed to another painter entirely, Claude Dupouch.' The discovery in the Minutier central of La Tour's contract of apprenticeship (see the Appendix below) provides the solution to this enigma. After a brief review of its contents and a discussion of the contradictions with Mariette's account, we shall examine, on the basis of new documentation, the milieu and activity of the artist who taught the young La Tour 'l'art de la peinture et du dessin'.