IN HIS LAST will and testament, written at Padua in his own hand and dated 1491, Pietro Priuli, Procurator of S. Marco de supra, requested ‘to be buried at S. Michele di Murano in my chapel, where a gravestone with its carved frame has been prepared, along with a floor covering of rose and white stones, as is the case around the altar; and I wish that a proper altarpiece (pala) be made, seeing that none has as yet been prepared’ (‘non esendo fata’; see Appendix 1 below).

BERNARDO BELLOTTO'S EARLY stylistic development was discussed in the first part of this article, in which several new attributions were suggested, mostly works which had previously been assumed to be by Canaletto. In this article it is suggested that a group of paintings, most of which have at one time or another been given to Bellotto, are, conversely, the work of an anonymous painter for whom the sobriquet the ‘Lyon Master’ is here proposed. This artist is distinct from Bellotto’s only known pupil in these years, his brother Pietro, to whose Venetian period some attributions are also advanced.

ANTHONY BLUNT NEVER much liked Surrealism. When, however, he reviewed the London International Surrealist exhibition of 1936, he accepted the fact that the English of a certain sort seemed to relish Surrealism in surprising quantities, which gave him an idea – a wicked idea. Perhaps, he suggested, an explanation could be found in ‘the repressive education and way of living characteristic of the English. After all the psychological confusions created in the average Englishman by a public school education are such that he may well find in front of a Superrealist painting that kind of sexual liberty and excitement which suits him. It may be that after a life of good, clean fun the sadism of Soft Construction with boiled apricots by Dalí . . . provides a healthy escape.’ Blunt’s wicked idea was a travelling exhibition of Surrealism especially for the English public schools: Surrealism as therapy for the great repressed of Winchester, Eton, Harrow and Marlborough.

SURPRISINGLY LITTLE ATTENTION has been given to the question of who funded Signorelli’s Last Judgment frescos in the Cappella Nuova of Orvieto cathedral. The Opera del Duomo paid the bills, but did the funds come from consolidated revenue or specific donations? The presence of the Monaldeschi arms in the vault segment above the entrance portal of the chapel has led many scholars to accept uncritically that pre-eminent family as the major, or only, source of funding for the decorative programme – Jonathan Riess, for example, recently described them as the ‘chief financiers’ of the chapel. Three Monaldeschi bequests to the Opera del Duomo relating to the ‘cappella nuova’ need to be examined. Confusion was sown in 1580 by Alfonso Ceccarelli, the partisan, and not always reliable, chronicler of the Monaldeschi, and was compounded two centuries later by Guglielmo Della Valle who identified the two identical arms contained in the acute angles of the segment with the Virgins (Fig.29) as those of Francesco and Achille respectively.

ON 29TH DECEMBER 1607 Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Knights of St John in Malta, wrote to his ambassador in Rome instructing him to request a papal brief that would grant him permission to invest ‘a person favoured by us’ (una persona à noi ben vista) with the habit of Magistral Obedience. This he requested ‘for one time only’. The person is not mentioned by name, but a specific reference to the fact that he had committed murder in a brawl and further circumstantial evidence securely identified him as the painter Caravaggio. In Rome, the ambassador immediately submitted this request, which was approved by Pope Paul V on 7th February 1608. The ambassador’s request had, however, an important modification in that it was presented for ‘due persone à lui ben viste’. An unnamed newcomer had entered the scene. The papal brief, with the pope’s approval, was eventually promulgated on 15th February 1608: ‘facultas exhibendi habitum Militum Magistralium duabus personis sibi benvisis, non obstante quod illarum una homicidium in rixa commiserit.’ Once again the brief did not mention the two prospective knights by name. On 14th July 1608 Caravaggio was received as a Knight of Magistral Obedience and, shortly afterwards, he signed the monumental Beheading of St John the Baptist: ‘F’ MichelAn . . .’ (Fra Michelangelo) (Fig.32). His companion was not identified.

ALTHOUGH BERNARDO CAVALLINO (1616–c.1656) has long been recognised as one of the most original artists of the Neapolitan Baroque, this appreciation has not been extended to all aspects of his œuvre. Critical discussion has tended to focus on the small cabinet paintings in which he specialised from an early date. His relatively uncommon exercises in grand-manner figure painting, on the other hand, have been consistently downgraded in the literature and are consequently less well understood. Before the nineteenth century, for example, connoisseurs were encouraged to compare Cavallino’s work in both formats by viewing one of his rare altarpieces in relation to its smaller modello hanging in the sacristy close by. For the early eighteenth-century Neapolitan biographer Bernardo de’ Dominici, the results of this comparison were clear-cut. The modello was ‘da ogn’uno stimata migliore’ than the altarpiece itself.