THE TITLE OF this article may seem somewhat provocative, in view of the existence of the red-chalk portrait of Pierre Legros, which shows the celebrated French sculptor seated beneath an extravagantly billowing curtain with a portrait bust, portfolio, drill and hammer at his feet, gazing fixedly at the spectator and proudly pointing his chisel at a model of St Bartholomew, as if this were the consummate symbol of his art, indeed of his entire career.  Of the history of the marble figures of the Apostles in the nave of S. Giovanni in Laterano, however, we know from various sources that some of the sculptors engaged from the outset, such as Jean-Baptiste Théodon, Anton Francesco Andreozzi and Pietro Balestra, were subsequently dismissed.

ESTABLISHED IN ROME from 1744, the Scottish painter Gavin Hamilton became so central a figure in the cultural life of the city that a visit to his studio was on the itinerary of many Grand Tourists with money to spend. While he is widely recognised as a founding father of Neo-classicism, his influence on late eighteenth-century taste was exercised in ways other than through his painting. From the late 1750s he was active as a dealer in antique sculpture and, a decade later, as an excavator of ancient sites, acquiring choice pieces from important Roman collections and unearthing a large number of marbles from a succession of speculative digs, most notably at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli (1769-71).

OF THE MANY collaborators and pupils of Giovan Lorenzo Bernini, Giuliano Finelli (1601-53) was one of the first to establish himself in Rome as an independent sculptor. From the 1630s he is well known for his busts and monuments of aristocrats and cardinals, many of which survive. Thanks to a previously unpublished contract in the Aldobrandini archive it is now possible to add another commission to Finelli's oeuvre.

A BRONZE CAST of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska's Bust of Alfred Wolmark has recently been acquired by the Scottish national Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. Made in the first half of 1913, this larger than life-size bust depicts the painter Alfred Wolmark (1877-1961), whose work is the subject of an exhibition currently in Hull. The angular, faceted treatment of the hair and face reveal Gaudier-Brzeska's growing interest in Cubism.

 THE APPEARANCE OF an article on 'Meštrović, England and the Great War' in this Magazine in December 2002 has brought forth information on an important work, briefly mentioned in that text but heretofore untraced since its exhibition in London in 1915: the Descent from the cross, a relief in walnut wood carved two years earlier in Belgrade. This panel dates from a period when Ivan Meštrović (1883-1962), a Dalmation Croat who trained in Vienna, a Roman Catholic, and indeed then based in Rome, was deepening his already well-established commitment to Southern Slav unity through engagement with the revitalised Byzantine orthodox heritage of Serbia.